of all the things that might have been
by anthrop
Summary: A weight in his chest, an incredible pressure. Cracking noises, like broken pencils, or bubble wrap. His ribs. His ribs are yawning wide, ripping muscle and splitting skin, he can feel it, oh god he can feel it. Dirty wind rushing through unspeakable places inside of him. The song of a vast, lonely bell. Cold. He thinks something has gone very wrong.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: This is a TUE canon divergent fic I've had on the brain for actual years now, but I only sat down to work on it for the July '16 Camp NaNo. There's quite a bit roughed out but due to the nature of time travel fic updates will still be fickle. Warning for body horror, but that's the norm for my stuff haha. Title comes from Nine Inch Nails' "While I'm Still Here."_

* * *

There's _pain_ \- hot and sharp, white hot metal burning a hole through the most intimate parts of him. A grilled meat smell. A coppery citrus smell. Dirt and concrete dust and sweat slicking down his skin in gray smears, stinging in shallow scrapes from when he'd been tossed like a dirty rag.

There's _horror_ \- his own face leering down at him, twisted by death and insanity, the features just warped enough to catch a glimpse of his future self's other half. Red eyes blazing with hatred and an awful, ugly satisfaction. A fist punched clean through his chest. Blinding green light. Sharp, cruel fingers digging past his ribs, scrabbling and shoving into his heart, his core, into the very things that make him _him_.

There's _fear_ \- not for himself, no, he's got a bad habit of thoughtless self-sacrifice and he knows it. He fears for his friends, his family, for every human out there now, in a future some version of him never got to see, and then, in his present. If he fails here, if he dies- what happens to them?

There's himself- hanging bonelessly from the huge, hard hand of his future. It's him on either side of this hopelessly one-sided fight, it's just little human him staring blearily across ten years and seeing a monster wearing his colors and a rot-green mask of his face. He doesn't have teeth like a snarling baboon though, or a voice that can tear down the only home he's ever known, reduce it to so much rubble. Not yet, anyway.

It is so hard to breathe.

His future self's grin peels wider. There's too many teeth sprouting from wax-white gums, the long tongue obscenely red. Monstrous, that's the only word for this _thing_ rummaging through his organs. That wide mouth moves. Words trickle to his ears from a long way off, a threat that can't touch him so far down. His vision is starting to fade. Hearing's nearly gone too. He's passing out, an all too familiar occurrence in his life. It's happened plenty of times before, but not… nothing quite like this. There'd been no gristle crunch of bone, no bright spurt of blood or ectoplasm, no brutal punch or landing that filled his eyes with stars and painted his skin black and blue. Even still, he thinks-

The ghost's bloody eyes widen in unmistakable shock. He's falling? No, dropped. The hand in his chest catches on something inside him with a nauseating tug before popping free. He hits the asphalt, the impact jarring but painless, or at least it doesn't hurt any more than the inferno eating up his chest. Somehow, _that's_ getting worse, and he can't muster the air to scream again. He thinks-

 _Pain_.

Twitching. Scrabbling against the asphalt, against the monster's shins, all of his muscles trying to crawl off of his bones and away from the medallion burning up his core, his _heart_.

He thinks-

A weight in his chest, an incredible pressure. Cracking noises, like broken pencils, or bubble wrap. His _ribs_. His ribs are yawning wide, ripping muscle and splitting skin, he can feel it, oh god _he can feel it_. Dirty wind rushing through unspeakable places inside of him. The song of a vast, lonely bell. _Cold_.

He thinks something has gone very wrong.


	2. Chapter 2

Tremors. A disturbance among the children-

No.

Death! Death among the children!

They are dying, rotting and withering to mulch and dust! A hole- there is a hole in the world, a hole where nothing but the children were before. It leaks death like a poison, fire and flood and drought and frost all at once and yet none of those at all!

No.

This is…. She knows this. Old memories, faded as the last smell of spring growth in the heat of summer. Father gives her names for what she's forgotten, fills in the gaps and brings new meaning to what little she does remember from Before.

The Timekeeper has intruded upon Father's paradise.

No.

There is no sign of the fabled Master of Time. This is his handiwork, but it is not him that has appeared where his meddling is unwanted. The portal is one of his, but the ghost that came through is….

No. _No_. She already- He can't possibly-

She must see this for herself.

Gracefully, careful always of the children that swarm about her roots, she descends from the treetop she had been resting in and makes her way across the Garden. It was a city once, and there are still ruins enough to imagine and remember what used to be, but humans have had no sway here for a long, long time. She still relies on the old street markers, the children receding from the cracked and overgrown asphalt so she may walk unhindered. Echoes of recollection call to her from billboards and empty storefronts, but she pays them no mind. The past is an ugly, choking weed. It does not deserve to thrive.

The home- or what remains of it- that the disturbance appeared in is worth a second's pause. She had torn this building down brick by brick, leaving only the man-made portal to churn in its rust-and-rivet frame. It's a clear view from the street to the basement, and amid the rubble she can see a figure hunched on his elbows and knees. He retches, spits up something sickly-sweet and hot as human blood.

Human, and yet not.

She knows him. She _knows_ him, and he _should not_ be here. Her perception wavers, flickers through the roots and vines and leaves of the children, and through their senses she finds the dusty tangle of glittering black bones picked clean in years past, her prized keepsake among her magpie pile of trophies, and _yet-_

And yet he is here again. Alive, and yet not.

Down below he groans, sits back on his heels, one hand to the ground for balance. His exhale smells curiously… inorganic. She thinks of hot metal ticking in the afternoon sun, can't place why such a thing would matter, and then belatedly remembers the word for 'car.' Something inside him is the source of the smell.

Of course!

The tension unwinds from her vines all at once, relief nearly dropping her to her knees. The boy below is not _her_ boy, not the one she killed and kept pieces of. This boy is a time traveler, no doubt given some trinket infused with powerful magic. Was he sent here? Does the Master of Time truly think so little of her? Of Father? Does he truly believe a little halfling thing like the Ghost Child could possibly stop the Growth?

She bares her own thorns at the thought, black fangs that grow where human teeth once rooted. If that is what he thinks, he must be swiftly corrected.

She leaps down into the pit, children swarming after her to ease her progress and to serve as guards. It's thoughtful of Father to point them after her, but hardly necessary. She isn't half as weak as she once was, the first time she reduced a shivering little boy into so much mulch.

He hears the whispering of dragging vines first, looking over his shoulder when crumbled bits of brick tumble down to the rusted floor. His eyes bulge in his dirty face when he sees her and he scrambles back with a strangled scream, one wild hand dragged through the vomit he'd left on the crunchy-curled leaves of the children his arrival had murdered.

" _What is your intent?_ " She speaks through the slitted mouths of the children, her own mute and smiling coldly. It unsettles the humans, and little wandering ghosts too. " _Why are you here?_ "

He squeaks.

" _Did Clockwork send you?_ " She strides closer, takes cruel satisfaction when he recoils. "Or are you a thief, hiding from your punishment in the first timeline you fell into?"

"Tuh- timeline?"

" _Where is the trinket that brought you here? I want it for a keepsake, after I've peeled the meat from your bones._ " She sighs; a little wistful, a touch fond. It had been such fun, the first time.

His eyes widen again. Realization, horror. He'd done that the first time too. " _Sam?_ "

She silences the children, frowning delicately, and uses her own voice to speak. "No. Not for a long time. But it's sweet of you to think so."

"What-" He climbs to his feet, wipes his hand on his jeans without looking away from her. "What _happened_ to you? To my house? To- _everything?_ What's going on?"

"If you don't know then why are you here, murdering my children?" She gestures at the dead strewn at their feet. The children that followed her down snarl their grief, and their anger. The children are innumerable, but that does not mean they have no individual worth. The death of one is felt by all.

"Your _what?_ "

She narrows her eyes, brings herself closer to the boy. He's cornered now, backed up against a wall and hedged in by debris. Even if he tries to fly away, her vines would be far quicker. "Father's gift to the planet. Father's _retribution_ to the human race. We've taken half of this continent, and the rest will join the Garden soon enough."

"Wait, your- _what?_ " He shakes his head, grimacing. "Your _dad_ did all this?"

She laughs. The sound echoes out of the children's grinning mouths, ringing off the metal walls. The boy shudders at the sound, his soft flesh breaking out in goosebumps. There are so few humans left to play with, and Father won't allow her to stray from the oasis. Fear is a scent she has grown to miss. "The flesh walkers that I once called _family_ couldn't serve as gardeners, as Father made use of the others. They were given to the Growth long ago."

She closes her eyes, lets the memories wash over her like a morning fog. The past is an ugly, choking weed, but it cannot harm her anymore. "They were… distractions."

"...Sam?" The boy's expression is strange. Soft. Complicated. She understands fear. She does not understand this.

His eyes are blue. She'd forgotten that.

"Father has long expected the Observants to interfere," she continues archly, as if he hadn't spoken. "He expected them to send the Timekeeper to meddle where he is not wanted. But I don't think he ever expected _you_."

"Timekeeper? Do you mean Clockwork?" He dares to take a step toward her, freezing in place when the children react with a unified hiss and snap of their petal-and-thorn jaws. She waves them aside, and they reluctantly take their roots behind her own. She is not afraid of one brittle-jointed flesh walker, abomination though he may be.

But she _is_ curious.

"If you're trying to bluff, it won't work. You _reek_ of his magic."

"I... I _had_ one of his medallions," he admits slowly. "I'm not… really sure what happened to it."

"A pity," she replies. "I wanted it. I suppose you'll have to do now."

He swallows; a dry, thirsty click. "Um. What does that mean, exactly?"

She bares her black thorn teeth at him in a snarl playing at a smile. His fingers twitch, hands hovering out in a placating motion gone sludgy with fear. Good. She knows fear. "It means _run_."

He hesitates. She allows it, his dawning realization and alarm as sweet as summer rain. And then there is a bright flash of white, a color and sound unpleasantly tied to memories long buried, and Phantom turns tail and bolts for the sky above. She gives him a head start, not out of fairness but to make the chase last a little longer. Fairness is a word outside of her vocabulary, but even still…. He doesn't seem to have come here with any purpose. Perhaps it was an accident. Perhaps he stuck his nose where it wasn't wanted. They used to do that, the three of them-

 _Ah_.

She buries the memory, shivery laughter and high-strung panic tangled together in her mind, three children running and flying for their lives and feeling untouchable all the while. It is past. It is _gone_. Weeds are not meant to thrive.

Though her flesh body is slow, through the children she is everywhere. She watches him, keeps a tight leash so he can't escape skyward- it is convenient that he still requires air, and so can only go so high before he chokes on frost and falls, catching himself just before the splatter. The children play with him too, nipping at his heels and curling serpentine around his limbs whenever he tries to rest, keeping him far from the borders of the Garden where Father would not hesitate to kill him. He retaliates when they bite too deep, hot anger and bright bursts of green that burns but doesn't kill- unexpected, but appreciated. She gives him a little more time to live, for every child he could kill and doesn't.

Mercy given for mercy paid.

He drinks from a stagnant pool scummy with algae, spends the night fetal and shaking and sick. After that he drinks from streams, and only sips to soften the roughest edge of his thirst. He digs through rubble for canned goods, only for his face to go white with dismay when he finds the expiration dates. She leaves an offering for him the second night; bright pieces of fresh fruit, bigger and thornier than in years past, but still edible. He eats cautiously, hunched and ready to bolt at the slightest twitch of the children that guard him. He's stronger after a meal, so the next time she leaves a little less.

The sun rises and sets, the moon waxes in a night sky brilliant with uncountable stars. The shadows around his eyes grow dark, and hunger sharpens his bones. His voice grows hoarse from hurling questions; at her, at the children, at Father who listens and grumbles disquiet in her mind but leaves her to her games. She's tempted to answer his questions, but she has questions of her own he won't- or can't- answer. So she remains silent, and his voice cracks with desperation, and still he asks-

"Why?"

Almost two weeks have passed. He is filthy, white hair gone gray and his jumpsuit caked with mud. The scratches he arrived with have healed, replaced with deeper cuts that ooze ectoplasm slow as tree sap. The children always play roughly, and she saw no reason to stop them. He sits on a fallen telephone pole overgrown with yellow mushrooms, cupping green fire in his hands for warmth. Three banana peels are piled by one foot, the only thing she's given him to eat all day.

"I don't understand," he mutters. To her, perhaps. More likely to himself. She's spoken to him only rarely since she let him fly away from the rubble that had been his home, once. "Do we all go evil somehow? First me, then you? What about Tucker? Where is he in all this? I thought you guys died because of me. But you- you're messed up, but you aren't _dead_. You don't make my ghost sense go off, so you can't be. You _can't_. So what happened?"

He sighs, drops one hand to press his fingers to his chest, to the ragged hole in his jumpsuit where a strange white shape had been before she'd torn it out. "What did he _do_ to me?"

She says nothing. These are questions she has no answer to.

The next day is overcast, a gray that stains her vision, sucks the color from Father's paradise. Winter will be upon them soon. They boy has traveled near the ruins of his home again, and this time she did not chase him away as she did before. She has even allowed him a few hours to rest to recover some of his strength, and spent the time near enough to watch the rise and fall of his chest with her own eyes.

It is a curious thing, to see a ghost breathe.

Just when she is growing bored, considering how much more fun it would be to push and pull him through another maze half-spun in her mind and in Father's, something happens. A smell creeps into the air, heavy and sullen, dripping from his nose and parted lips with his every exhale. Clockwork's magic again. But where is the source? What is the cause? Why now?

His chest hitches, breath cut suddenly, brutally short in a strangled syllable of noise caught in his throat. He is all at once a tangle of motion, jerky with pain. His eyes pop open and he lurches upright, hands clawing at his chest, and he _screams_.

She springs from her hiding spot among the trees, reaches out for him with her vines and hands both. Her intent- to help or to silence- is something she can't put to words. Later she will try to understand, and will only know that the boy that had been a parallel to a boy she had known once had been in pain, and she had wanted to be there for him. Either way, she is too late. White light blinds her, followed by temporal blue, and when she blinks away the spots, he's gone.

He's gone.

He is gone.


	3. Chapter 3

Jack slams on the breaks with a muddled curse, swerves a hard right and bites his tongue when the RV's front tire rolls over the curb. In the back Maddie shouts shock; the crash of steel implements spilling to the floor almost drowns her out. He kills the engine with shaking hands, belatedly remembers to put the RV in park.

"What happened?" Maddie calls out. She sounds rattled, but unhurt.

"A car came out of nowhere," Jack calls back, squinting into the darkness beyond the reach of the headlights. He hadn't heard anyone drive off, but maybe the grind and of the RV's protesting treads had been too loud. "Damn near drove me off the… road…."

"What?"

But Jack is too busy wrestling his seatbelt off and shoving his way out the door to reply. Now that the weird blue glare of whatever car came out of nowhere and vanished the same way is gone, he can make out the vague shape of a body laying prone in the middle of the street.

He can't see much, still blinking spots from his vision, but by gentle prodding he can tell the figure is young, male, and out cold. "Maddie! _Maddie!_ "

Her boots ring out on the steel steps. "Did we hit them?" She asks urgently.

"No," he says over his shoulder, "But I think the car that almost hit us might've clipped him. Get the kit- and some light!"

"On it!"

The body at his knees groans, a weirdly familiar sound. Jack doesn't know why, not until Maddie comes back with a flashlight in hand, splashing a cone of white light across a dirty, slack face. A face he _knows_ , a face he hasn't seen in….

"I don't understand," he whispers. The flashlight jitters in Maddie's outstretched hand as she stops short.

"But it can't be- _Danny?_ "

The boy groans again, eyes fluttering open, glazed and unseeing. A shudder runs through his skinny frame, like an ice cube's been dragged down his spine. His head rocks to one side, and what little consciousness he has drifts away.

"This isn't- he _can't_ be-" The cone of light light skitters dizzyingly. Maddie's shaking, but she doesn't step away. "Jack, is he…?"

His chest rises and falls, but breath isn't proof enough. Hesitantly, Jack reaches out, presses two fingers to the boy's neck. Even with gloves on, it's easy to feel a pulse, strong and racing and _real_. Jack snatches his hand away, nodding, not trusting himself to speak.

"We have to bring him inside," Maddie says after a pause to deliberate. "The hospital would ask too many questions. I'll get the stretcher."

"Right."

She takes the flashlight with her, leaving Jack in the half-dark in the middle of the street. Jack swallows, carefully rolls the boy onto his back, feeling for injuries and finding a multitude of old, half-healed cuts. His ribs bite through his mud-slick shirt.

Jack sits back, shakes his head like shaking off a punch to the temple. This can't be real. It can't.

They bring him down to the laboratory, take his vitals and clean him up on auto-pilot. They are both mute with trepidation. The boy looks in rough shape, strange slices taken out of his limbs and the rest of him mottled with bruising. Underweight for his height and- presumed- age. His clothes are completely ruined, shredded like he was thrown in a lion pit or something equally crazy. They peel him out of his filthy rags and, for lack of any better alternative, put him in some of Jazz's old clothes. He's skinny enough to fit them well.

Through all of this, through bandages and antiseptic, warm water and sponges, even hoisting him awkwardly into a pair of jeans, the boy doesn't so much as twitch under their firm hands.

Twenty minutes pass in tense silence, interrupted only by the beeping of the heart monitor. Jack can't look away, hypnotized. Maddie must be the same, surely, even if she's keeping her hands busy cleaning up. All that old blood had washed away red, and only red. He doesn't look at her, eyes fixated on the boy, but her silence is confirmation enough.

Eventually the boy shifts, shaking awake as if shaking away a bad dream. He doesn't startle, but he does sit up quickly. Immediately he grimaces, presses his face into his hands. Light sensitivity maybe, or a hunger headache. They haven't ruled out a concussion, but if this really is- well, if he _is_ , would he even be able to suffer a concussion?

The boy stills, looks up, squinting at them. "Mom? Dad?"

Jack shudders, the last little crumb of denial vanishing. This boy isn't just some doppelgänger, some improbable skew of unrelated genetics and ancestry resulting in a stranger wearing their son's face. Not if he calls them by name. But this…

This should be impossible.

"How did I…?" The boy- _Danny-_ grumbles something under his breath. "It doesn't matter. I'm just happy to _be_ back. What day is it? Have you seen Sam and Tucker? Are they okay?"

"They haven't been by," Maddie replies, her voice carefully neutral.

"Oh. That's good, I guess." He pushes the shock blanket off, swings his legs off the table, only then noticing the bandaged patchwork of his forearms. Panic scrambles across his face, makes sharp angles of his shoulders, and he looks back at them with genuine fear in his eyes. "Uh- I can explain-"

"How are you here?" Jack interrupts.

"Here?" He echoes, uncertainly.

"You're _alive_ ," Maddie clarifies, stepping closer, iron in her spine and in her voice. "This isn't possible. Explain."

One hand jumps to his chest, his expression- complicated. Jack isn't sure what to make of it. "How… How long have I been gone?"

"It's been two years since we handed you over," Maddie says. "I won't ask again for an explanation."

Danny stares. "Handed me over? To who?"

Jack's mouth is dry as dust. "If you don't know, then you aren't our son." Every instinct in him is screaming that this is his Danny-boy, but they _saw_. Two years ago, they saw exactly what Danny was, and was capable of.

That's why they had to let him go.

Danny eases to his feet, owl-eyed. "What are you talking about? Of course I'm your son. I'm sorry I've been gone so long, but I can explain. It'll sound crazy, but Sam and Tucker can back me up. I went into the Ghost Zone to get some answers about some weird ghost stuff that was happening and things got… complicated."

"Complicated?" Jack asks.

He pauses, runs his fingers along the bandages on one wrist, frowns at the black v-neck shirt they put him in. "I'm sorry. You might hate what I'm gonna say, but- let's just say I've had an eye-opening experience and I'm _definitely_ overdue on telling you guys the truth." He laughs, shaky and half-hearted. "I never told you about how the Portal opened before, but-"

"We know," Jack interjects, before Danny can recount the awful accident. Wearily he heaves himself to his feet, draws the ecto gun from the holster at his belt. The electric whine as it charges is shrill in the resonant lab.

Danny goes very still.

"I'm so sorry, Dan-o," Jack whispers.

"We know what you are," Maddie snaps, her voice ringing. "We tried to take care of you ourselves, but that _thing_ inside you was too strong, too _stubborn…_." She shakes her head. "We didn't have any other options. We gave you to the GIW two years ago. They exorcised the ghost, but it had overshadowed you too long. _You didn't survive_."

Danny takes a step back, and another, empty hands held up in an empty show of peace. Jack knows all too well how fast Phantom was, knows all too well how strong too. Danny might be a young ghost, but he has more than enough experience to make up for any weakness he might have.

"That- that never happened," Danny insists. "You _didn't_. I would _remember_ that. I was in the future, okay? I used a time medallion belonging to a ghost named Clockwork. I was attacked, and the medallion- it's broken, or something. It's gone haywire, yanking me to different points in-" He falters. "Well, I hope it wasn't the future."

Maddie spares a look Jack's way, the red lenses of her hood flashing in the overhead fluorescents. Her expression is hidden by her hood, but Jack knows what she's thinking. A ghost will say anything to save its skin.

"Do you have any proof?" She asks. "This 'time medallion,' for instance?"

"Got an X-ray?"

"Excuse me?"

He taps his chest again, winces like the spot is tender. All that bruising, of course. Even as they bandaged his injuries Jack had wondered if there had been any point, if they could trust the color of his blood or if it was just a clever trick. Even now, Jack can't be sure.

"The ghost that attacked me," Danny says, "he did something to try and keep me from escaping back to my time. He didn't want me interfering, because if- certain things didn't happen, he wouldn't… exist…." He trails off, eyes widening, a grin splitting his face. "That's it!"

" _What's_ it?" Jack asks stiffly. His arm is trembling. He tightens his grip on the gun. It would be cruel, to shoot twice.

"This- this has gotta be an alternate timeline! A splinter, or an offshoot, or something. I'm not _your_ son, not really. I'm another Jack and Maddie Fenton's son! You never handed me over to anybody, I _told_ you. Your Danny-" His grin flickers out like a blown candle, replaced by a swallowing fear that drains the color from his face. "You... you _killed_ him. You killed your son."

Jack feels something in him go cold with grief he thought he'd buried. It sickens him, and saddens him too, to see this shade of his son so delusional, so _wrong_. They'd known things went screwy in a ghost's mind after death, but never _this_ bad. Why does it have to be this bad? "Danny, no, it wasn't like that. You were sick-"

" _No he wasn't!_ " His eyes burn a hellish green as he slams his fist on the operating table. It crumples like aluminum foil, the horrible shriek of metal forcing Jack to cover his ears briefly. He lowers his hands as Danny rasps, "He was like me, wasn't he? Your Danny? He helped people, stopped the ghosts from wrecking stuff, and you still thought he was the bad guy, right? Did he tell you, or did you find out?"

Maddie steps toward him, and he retreats step for step. "Danny," she says, but he ignores her.

"You thought he was a monster," he says, "So you handed him over to some creepy agency when you couldn't ' _fix'_ him. Is that what happened?"

It is. Perhaps Danny isn't as lost as Jack had begun to fear. He looks to Maddie, as always, for guidance. She nods, looks back at Danny, and gestures at Jack to lower his weapon. The whine of it powering down eases some of the tension in Danny's shoulders, but his eyes still flicker a pale, smokeless green.

"The accident damaged you," Maddie says gently. "Beyond what we were capable of repairing. The GIW has far more resources at hand than we do. They guaranteed a successful exorcism, but the Phantom entity-"

"But I'm not possessed!" He's shouting, louder with every sentence. "Your Danny wasn't either! The accident _changed_ me, it gave me my powers." He looks between them pleadingly. "I- _he-_ \- was _helping people_."

"Danny, come on," Jack tries. "You know we love you. We were just trying to help you. Neither of us ever wanted any of this to happen."

"You're not listening to me. I'm not _your_ Danny. I've never been in a GIW facility. I was in the _future_."

"There's no such thing as time travel," Maddie says. "Sweetie, please. Let us help you now."

Danny bites his lip, looks between them like he's looking at a pair of strangers. Some cruel part of Jack wants all of what Danny's saying to be true, that maybe they are strangers after all and their own son is dead, and only dead, that they will never have to look his ghost in the eyes and tell him he died. If only it could be true.

"People said that about ghosts too."

Too late, Jack realizes what Danny means to do. He cries out, lunging to catch him, but with no meat to slow Danny down he's so much faster. He vanishes through the Ghost Portal without so much as a ripple.

* * *

 _A/N: Thanks for the comments so far! Just an fyi, the next chapter might take a little longer._


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: Sorry about the wait! Hope this chapter is worth it._

* * *

Dorathea finds the boy- the _human-_ unconscious in a grove of apple trees. Or- no, not unconscious. Sleeping. He is alive, after all. But how did he ever end up here in the Ghost Zone?

She wants to wake him.

She shouldn't wake him.

Not because it would be rude, though the boy looks as if he needs all the sleep he can catch. He's a skinny creature, all long limbs with big hands and feet he has yet to grown into. His ill-fitted clothing appears clean, but there's dirt gathered in the exhausted lines of his face and his dark hair is greasy and matted. Strange bandages, as clean as his clothes, cover his exposed skin from forearms to hands and calves to bare feet. Amid the tangled tree roots is a pile of gnawed apple cores.

She wants to wake him.

Her fingers twitch to the heavy gold amulet at her throat, finding reassurance at its cold touch. Curiosity invites disaster, upheaval, _change_. Change can be lethal. Her brother- her king- forbids all change in his realm, and to invite his ire is not worth sating mere curiosity.

And yet-

And yet is she not away from her brother- her king's- castle? Is she not out from beneath his livid glare? She wanders despite him, or perhaps because of him. She died, yet still she lingers here in this endlessly curious place that is so much larger than she ever imagined the world could be. How could she be anything _but_ curious? There are so many answers to find, so many new questions to uncover.

And oh, she has questions about this human boy.

"Hello?" She calls out softly, clinging to the trunk of a tree not far from where the boy sleeps. Its branches scratch and sigh overhead, leaves tickling the crown of her head. She ignores it, and calls out again.

The boy does not stir.

She wonders where he came from, what circumstances left him so injured and worn-out, how he came to this little floating island surrounded by untold miles of nothing but so much green smoke. She wonders why no other hungry ghost has picked him off yet.

"Boy? Can you hear me?"

He shifts uneasily, a grimace that starts at his brow and pulls sharp angles of tension through the rest of him like strings through a cleverly-made puppet. A soft groan slips from his parted mouth and then his eyes are open and settled upon her. He leaps- no, he _flies_ to his feet in a burst of motion, settling into a hunched stance with his elbows tight against his sides, and though she could have sworn his eyes had been a pale and unassuming color, they are now a fevered, _inhuman_ shade of green.

Dorothea flinches away from this human who is not so human as he had appeared. He seems more than ready to fight her, as any ghost whose territory had been intruded upon would. If it comes to a fight, she is plenty capable of protecting herself, but-

But then he sees her- _sees_ , rather than only reacts to- and he relaxes. Drops his arms, _smiles_.

"Oh Dora," he says with obvious, baffling relief. "It's just you. Man, you scared me."

"...I apologize," she replies, carefully hiding her confusion. No one ever calls her _Dora_ , and how does he know her name at all?

"I didn't realize I'd ended up so close to your lair," he continues, settling his bandaged feet on the ground. His bare toes sink into the soft earth as he chuckles. "I've gotten so turned around lately. It's nice to see a friendly face. Better you than Skulker, right?"

She doesn't know who Skulker is. She says nothing, uncertain and therefore wary. The boy takes no notice.

"Actually," he says, "You've been around the Ghost Zone awhile. Maybe you can help me."

"...Help you?"

"I need directions- or, well, maybe a guide?" He shrugs, his smile widening in a poor attempt at charm. He looks like a beggar or a cutthroat, not someone to be charmed by. "I've been flying around a while now and not really getting anywhere. The Ghost Zone changes way more than you'd think."

Humans cannot fly, but she doesn't bother stating the obvious. Humans do not have glowing green eyes when they are startled either. "Directions to where?"

"Clockwork's lair. I need to talk to him like, ASAP."

Surprised, she asks, "How do _you_ know the Master of Time?"

He winces. "It's a long story. Can I tell you on the way?"

She narrows her eyes, digging her nails into the crumbly bark of the tree she still hides behind. How presumptive of him, to act as if she's already agreed to help! "What could a human possibly want with _him?_ "

Irritation flickers across his face, there and gone as he visibly reins his temper in. Certainly not a true ghost, if he's capable of managing his anger. Certainly like no ghost she has ever known, at least. "That's also a long story. Dora, look, I don't wanna be rude here but there's a very good chance I'm working on a limited time frame before I-" He huffs. "Okay, _that's_ a long story too. Point is, I'm in a hurry, so would you-"

"I would _not_." Oh, and there is _her_ temper. He must see her eyes change, for he doesn't speak and is watchful instead. She lets her hand fall from her amulet and steps out from behind the tree. She does not miss the way his eyes flicker to her throat.

"I _would_ have answers," she says crisply. "How did you come here?"

"I _flew_ ," he says, as if it's the simplest thing to know and _she's_ the fool for asking.

" _Humans cannot fly,_ " she hisses.

"Dora, c'mon," he laughs, but she silences him with a cutting gesture.

"Don't _call_ me that!" She squints through the itch of scales growing along her skin. "How do you know my name?"

His frustrating smile fades at last. He looks older for it. "You don't…. You don't know who I am, do you?"

"Of _course_ not."

"But-" He looks at her as if seeing her for the first time. "You've never gone through the Fenton Portal?"

"I've never heard of such a thing," she bites out scornfully through a jaw growing cluttered with fangs.

He holds up his hands placatingly. "Hey, hey, okay. There's no reason to get-"

She snarls, the sharp _snikt_ of her claws rending wounds across the truck of the nearby tree. He swallows, and shakily tries again.

"I- I mean- I'm _sorry_ I'm upsetting you. There's just been a- a misunderstanding. I think I get it now."

The shape of horns sprouting from her skull always gives her a ringing headache. She staggers under the weight of them, gains her balance as a tail slips out from beneath the hem of her skirts. "Well I do _not_."

Another placating gesture. She wants to tear his hands from his wrists to make him stop. "I'm in the past," he says, as if that is supposed to clarify _anything_. "We meet in my past, your future- or, uh. You never talked about this, so maybe you're not my- I mean, not the Dora I know, but an alternate timeline Dora?"

She thinks she's following his stammering train of thought. He knows of Clockwork, somehow, and that is explanation enough. "I thought the Master of Time had no hand in the lives of humans," she says. Her breath carries no smoke, which is good news for the boy.

"I'm not-" He shuts his eyes briefly, sighing. "I'm not as human as I look."

As if she hadn't sorted that out on her own? What a rude little creature. She ought to crush him beneath her claws. She loses her balance again and catches herself on hands like all fours, her neck stretching out and down to roar her ferocity, her fury.

The boy only sighs again. "I'm not making a great first impression here, am I?"

" _No_ ," she growls in a voice that shakes the leaves that now tickle the wings growing from her shoulder blades, " _You are not_."

"I'm not trying to get on your bad side on purpose," he says, speaking calmly, speaking as if she could not gut him with a single claw. "I'm just- I'm not really one hundred percent right now. I've had a rough couple of weeks. Well," he adds, laughing with some knotted combination of disbelief and disgust. "More like a rough month now."

Even with her vision blurred by a rage she's rapidly losing the reins of, Dorathea cannot quite let go of her curiosity. "Because of Clockwork?"

"Huh? Oh, um, maybe by proxy?" He shrugs. "It _is_ his stupid time medallion fused to my core, at any rate."

"A human with a core?" Dorathea asks, the gravel in her voice softening with interest. She crouches low to angle one eye at the boy, the better to see him by. "How was your heart replaced?"

He blinks at her, a smile tugging the corner of one mouth. "Oh, I've still got a heart too. It's part of that long story."

She nods, absently aware of her draconian form shrinking as her anger ebbs. "The same story that you are disinclined to share due to a time constraint placed upon you by this 'time medallion?'"

He grins again. "You took the words right out of my mouth."

Her claws become hands and slippered feet again, tail thinning away to nothing and horns to rounded bumps that rub the edge of her circlet uncomfortably. She stands on two feet rather than four, delicately brushing her skirt clean, and considers him for a lingering moment. At last she says, "I will guide you."

He lights up at once. "Really? You will? Great! I-"

" _On the condition_ ," she says sternly, "that you understand I make no claims to protect you from whatever or whomever we might cross paths with, and that I bear no responsibility toward you once we have come to Clockwork's' lair."

He blinks. "That's, uh, weirdly specific?"

"One learns to specify in the court of Lord Aragon," she sniffs.

"I bet." A flicker of green in his eyes, a flicker of anger in his expression. Familiarity with her brother- her king? "Honestly, I'd be good with just some directions if you aren't cool with coming."

"It would be impolite to leave you now."

"Fair enough," he laughs. "I _can_ take care of myself, y'know."

Her eyes find the bandages on his limbs again, and the leanness of his young face. "Can you?" She asks, and holds out her hand.

He doesn't take it, grinning instead. A burst of white light swallows him, and when she blinks the starlight from her eyes the boy has gone, replaced by a black-and-white ghost wearing his smug face.

"Thanks for the offer, but I'm good," he drawls. He has an echo to his voice now, and a white aura blurring his edges. There's not a trace of humanity left to him now that she can sense.

"Very well," she says.

They fly.

There's quite a distance from the outskirts of her brother- her king's- castle to Clockwork's Tower. It would be faster on wings, but she isn't nearly angry enough for that, now. And besides, the boy doesn't look as if he could keep pace with her in his state. Flying is nothing at all for a ghost, but perhaps he still has bones to slow him down. Even with his legs melted to a long stripe of black he lags behind her.

"Oh," he says once they've left the apple grove far behind. "My name's Danny. Probably should have mentioned that sooner, huh?"

"It would have been polite, yes," Dorathea notes wryly, glancing at him over her shoulder.

"Sorry," he says. "It's just- I already know you. Well- I know who you _are_ , just not the _you_ that I'm talking to now. You seem a little more… I dunno. Restrained, maybe? More restrained than the Dora I know."

There's nothing to say to that. What would she know of any other Dorathea?

"Sorry," he says again. "I'm rambling, I know. I'm just- tired, mostly. Worried, too. Getting a little more worried than I am tired, and that's also… kind of scaring me, to be honest."

Dora hums neutrally, and presses on. It's only natural for him to worry when his problem is- by proxy- Clockwork's handiwork. If he expects comforting words from her, he will be disappointed. Human or ghost or otherwise, he ought to have known better than to poke his nose in the Master of Time's business.

All ghosts know Clockwork- or rather, know _of_ him, and know better than to draw his attention. He is not an aggressive ghost, as the stories go. No one fears him for his rage. But this… the _distance_ that all ghosts give him comes from a place of respect, of acknowledgement. He is powerful, and all power is to be respected. After all, there are ghosts aplenty who fear the her brother's- the king's- castle, though Aragon and all his people never stray from its cold gray walls.

Dorathea bites her lip. All of his people, save one.

Still, this is the way of things. It has always been the way of things. First there was the Ghost Zone, and then there was Clockwork. Or perhaps she has it turned around? It would make sense, for space to precede time, wouldn't it? But then, so little of the Ghost Zone makes sense. Perhaps the Timekeeper was here first after all.

Well no matter that. What _matters_ is that there is Clockwork and the Observants who direct him, and that Clockwork has always kept his own counsel. The Ghost Zone is better for this.

That is the way of things. That will _always_ be the way of things.

The boy- Danny- tries a few more times to strike up a conversation, but she has remembered her caution, quelled her curiosity into something watchful and reactionary. She will help the boy, and maybe she will see what becomes of him, but she won't have a hand in it. He catches on after a while, and soon falls to muttering to himself.

A strange boy, but Dorathea thinks she's beginning to understand him. Loneliness is as familiar to her as her own two hands.

In time she finds the sturdier landmarks of the Ghost Zone; islands and gateways that linger where the rest flows on like a river. In this way she leads Danny to the First-and-Last Lair, the Unbroken Tower, the dwelling of the Master of Time. Dorathea has never seen it before, but what else could this teetering thing of gears and scythes and ink-green stone be?

The tower is… intimidating. It leaks power like a chilling mist. She stares and wonders at the _age_ of it. Time means so little in the realm of the dead, but this… this place is _old_. It seems like the holy place of some bleak pagan god rather than the lair of any mere ghost. It is- not _malevolent_ , no. But it is… certain. Absolute. It is an echoing reminder that time will make dust out of all things.

Even little ghost girls who breathe fire when they are angry.

"What's wrong?"

Dorathea blinks, and the spell is broken. There is only a strange green tower floating in a strange green world, and a black-and-white boy floating at her side.

"It is- nothing," she says. Her fingertips touch the amulet at her throat for comfort. For the first time she can recall, she thinks she's glad to have this power, and _only_ this much power. Better to breathe fire, she thinks, than to have each and every potential the future brings weighing down her shoulders.

She wouldn't wish for Clockwork's powers for all the freedom it might bring her. She knows a dungeon when she sees one, even if the bars are made to look like something you've built for yourself.

"Well, thank you," Danny says. "For being my guide. And for not kicking the crap out of me too."

He holds out his hand, the white glove unstained by the green light that dims Dorathea's own aura. She can't help but smile. He wishes to shake her hand, like a commoner! She's nearly offended by the thought, but of course, _look_ at him. He's never seen a shadow of court life by the look nor the speech of him. Feeling silly, she tucks her fingers against his palm and shakes once, barely squeezing, and quickly drops her hand.

"I am glad to have met you," Dorathea says, and surprises herself by meaning it. "For the first time, personally speaking."

"Right," he laughs, and turns for Clockwork's lair. She watches the flicker of his tail vanish behind the wooden door, and he is gone.

For a moment she feels a pang of regret; for letting him go, for not asking more questions. It passes, as all things do, and she makes for her brother's- her king's- castle. It is not her lair nor it is her home, but it is where she must go when her wandering is done.

"Hey, Dora?"

She twitches, claws springing from her fingertips on reflex. But it is only the boy again, and he would not harm her. Or- he does not seem the type to harm without fair warning. She relaxes, discretely, and faces him.

"Yes?"

His expression has turned fretful. Frightened, even. "He isn't _there_."

"Are you quite certain? You were only inside a moment-"

"I'm sure," he insists. "He's _gone_."

Dorathea flounders. "Then simply _wait_ for him. This is his lair. He'll return, eventually."

He wrings his hands, flinging his gaze over his shoulder to look upon the Tower. "Could you- I hate to ask for another favor, but…."

"What is it?"

"Could you wait with me? Please?"

She blinks at him. "Whatever for?"

"Because I could get yanked away to some other point in time any second for all I know, and this is my third time getting this far and I still haven't even _seen_ Clockwork, and I'm starting to think he's doing this on purpose, and-" He sighs, mutters something indistinct under his breath. "Just in case, I would _really_ appreciate it if you were there to tell Clockwork what's happening to me, if I can't."

She wants to say yes.

She shouldn't say yes.

She is tired of hinging her choices on the will of a man who demands to be called king even after his people have all died.

"Very well."

His relief is a palpable thing Dorathea wasn't quite expecting. "Wh- really? You will? Thank you- _thank you!_ "

She follows him into the Tower, his repeated thanks so much noise quickly lost in the ceaseless tick and grind of vast, innumerable iron gears. Wherever she looks there is motion, great shadows layered and tiered like paper cutouts, or needlepoint. They blanket the walls and pile up in dark corners, drip from the ceiling like stalactites to reach, like fingertips, to touch their stalagmite brethren. The purpose of all this commotion, this organized chaos, is lost on her completely. Dorathea finds her shoulder blades pressed to the rough wood door, something almost like panic racing under her skin. It's too much. It is too much.

"Hey, it's okay." Danny's smile is kind. His hand on her arm neither pushes nor pulls at her; it is only a reassuring weight to remind her: she is not alone here. "First time here, huh?"

Faintly, she finds the words to ask, "...Is it so obvious?"

"A little." He lets go, his white boots reappearing so he may walk away. "It's definitely weird, I'll give you that. The bells don't even have hammers."

Bells? She looks up, and what she'd first thought was only darkness gains shapes and murky reflections. Dozens- no, _hundreds_ of bells in every shape and size and metal, hung from ropes and chains and wood, swaying back and forth without so much as a whisper of sound.

How strange. How very strange this all is.

"One of those is what's messing with my ghost core," Danny continues, pointing at something deeper within the maze. Careful steps bring her to a rack of gleaming pendants in the same shape as the gears all around them, hung on blue silk ribbons. They appear inert; decoration only. Dorathea knows better than most, the magic hidden in mere jewelry.

To have one of these, whatever its powers be, tangled up within him? She wonders. "Does it hurt?"

His eyes shutter closed as leans against a stone pillar. "...Yeah."

"I'm sorry."

"Eh." He waves one hand lazily, sinking down the pillar to sit in a heap of limbs. A slur slips into his words as he speak, his human exhaustion catching up to him. Three times he's come unsuccessfully to Clockwork's lair. How long can a human, even a fragment of one, survive in the Ghost Zone? "S'not your problem. I'm a stranger to you, an' you helped me anyway. Helping. _Are_ helping me."

She hides a smile in the back of her wrist. "Perhaps it would be best if you slept. You sound…."

"Delirious?" His eyes crack, two slivers of light in a gaunt face. "Probably. Like I said, it hasn't been fun."

Curiosity, that clever devil, gets the better of her. "Where- when have you been?"

He huffs, mouth twitching. "Apart from being trapped in the Ghost Zone? Well, I spent two weeks in a post-apocalyptic wasteland future-version of my home town surviving off of raw potatoes and bananas- with the occasional orange for good behavior- while some lunatic old lady version of one of my best friends- who somehow grew up to be a real life Batman villain, because why the hell not- played the Most Dangerous Game with me starring as the prey. So, y'know. Not fun."

All of this is said with a lot of hand gestures that do nothing to clarify a word. "I'm… sorry?" Dorathea tries, feeling a little helpless. Who is Batman? What is a potato? Every question answered raises a dozen more.

He laughs again, more breath than voice. "Sorry. I know that didn't make-"

He _freezes,_ the weariness weighing him down sapped at once. His eyes bulge as he lurches to his feet, broken fingernails scrabbling at his chest, catching on the seam running from throat to waist. A croak better suited to a ghoul than a boy drips from his gaping mouth. "No. Not again, not- _no_."

She flies to him, touching his arm as he did hers. "What's the matter? Danny, please, what-"

But she may as well be smoke, for all he hears her.

" _Clockwork!_ _Clockwork, don't do this to me! Please!_ "

There is no answer. Clockwork isn't home.

" _Danny_ ," she tries desperately. "What's wrong? Can I-"

He stumbles to his knees with a ragged cry, eyes rolling madly in their sockets. On hands and knees he makes a clumsy zigzag for the rack of medallions, but collapses fully with a third wretched noise. Thinking quickly, Dorathea grabs one medallion by its long ribbon, rushing to the boy as he shakes on the flagstones.

"Danny, I have it! What must I-"

He curls in on himself, his wounded cry swallowing her words. For a moment, just one small slice of time, his bright eyes meet hers. She sees panic and pain, feels the echoes of his fear in the pit of her where a heart once nested.

And then there is blue light.

And then there is nothing.

And then she _is_ again, hand outstretched but empty, kneeling beside no one at all. If she squints, there is the slightest scorch mark on the stone, and that is all that is left of the boy.

"Danny? Boy? Are you there?"

Nothing. Of course- of course there is nothing. He is gone. He is gone.

Low laughter resonates throughout the Tower, a toll that sends an echoing hum through the bells above. Dorathea flinches, hand jumping to her throat. Her amulet- but there is something else there as well! She looks down, and the medallion that had been in her hand is now hanging at her breast. But she did not- and Danny _couldn't_ -

Oh.

The shape of a man appears from behind the same pillar Danny had rested against moments before. A ragged cloak does little to hide the ebb and flow of his age, the broad shoulders of a man in his prime withering to the hunched and skeletal form of an elder in seconds. The glass-faced device set into his chest ticks patiently, keeping time for something inscrutable. Dora looks up and knows, truly, what it means to be nothing in the scope of all things.

Clockwork smiles.

* * *

 _A/N: Thanks for the fav, follows, and reviews. FYI there won't be a chapter in the next month or so as I will be doing NaNo to hammer out future chapters of this. As always, feel free to hit me up in a PM here or over on my tumblr, which is anthropwashere. Happy Halloween!_


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N: Posting this a bit early because NaNo's been going well and I feel bad not posting while I've got chapters sitting around in need of just a little polishing up. Thank you very much for the comments, faves, and follows thus far!_

* * *

"Did you hear that?"

Jazz pauses mid-sentence, highlighter poised over a line in her parapsychology textbook, and looks over at Danny. "Hear what?"

He frowns at the living room window, his homework forgotten on the coffee table. "I thought I heard a bang or something. From outside."

"Do you think we should check it out?"

"I…" His frown deepens, and his breath is a ribbon of mist too thin to mean anything dangerous is nearby. "I dunno-"

Something slams against the front door, startling them both out of their skin. There's a pause before a hand jiggles the knob, followed by scattered knocking. A muffled voice calls out, " _Hey, anybody home? Lemme in, it's me! I think I left my keys in…._ " The voice peters out in indistinct grumbling. " _Just- lemme in!_ "

Jazz's eyes widen, the highlighter slipping from her hand. " _Danny_."

"I _know_ ," he hisses. The voice at the door sounds just like _his_. He eases to his feet, creeps toward the door as the knocking grows more insistent. He puts one hand behind his back, summoning a ghost ray just in case. He throws the door open, not sure what to expect.

Danny may as well be looking at a funhouse mirror, because there's a second Danny standing on the welcome mat.

Seconds stretch, long enough for Danny get a good look at his double. He's skinnier, that's the first thing to notice. Sharper cheekbones and sunken eyes, elbows and wrists like knots in a tree trunk. Then the ragged, trailing bandages on his forearms and legs- is he wearing _Jazz's_ clothes? His hair is matted, and he _reeks_ ; like old sweat and trash and pond algae and god-knows what else. Lastly is his expression: wide eyes, furrowed brows, mouth parted in something just shy of a snarl, or the inhale before a scream-

This boy, whoever or whatever he really is, is terrified.

" _No!_ " His mirror shouts. "I thought I was home for sure this time!"

Danny doesn't know what _that_ might mean, but doesn't bother asking. He grabs the double by his shirt collar and hauls him bodily inside, kicking the door shut as he throws him to the floor. The double squawks but Danny pins him down, slapping a hand to his throat and squeezing.

" _Who are you?_ " Danny demands, bringing his a ghost ray close enough to the copy's face to see his cheek redden.

"Who are _you?_ " The double counters. He looks left, at Jazz hovering nearby with a ray gun aimed squarely at his head. "Jazz, come on, you know it's me."

"I know who my _brother_ is," Jazz replies calmly. "Are you one of Vlad's?"

"One of Vlad's _what?_ "

"One of his _clones_ ," Danny spits, squeezing a little more.

The copy chokes, stares like he thinks he's crazy. " _Clones?_ " He gasps out. "Since when- does Vlad- know- _hhgh-_ "

Danny eases up, lets the copy breathe. The way he asks, just so totally dumbfounded, it's too genuine to be from a script. Even Danielle wasn't this good, and Vlad had groomed her to be the best copycat out of his whole freaky sideshow. Danny glances at Jazz. She nods.

He tries a different angle. "Alright, you're not one of his. You back for another trick, Amorpho?"

"Hhkh- _Excuse_ me?"

Equally baffled, equally convincing. Well, that was a shot in the dark anyway. Amorpho's no good at mimicking voices, and this guy- whatever, whoever he is- sounds _just_ like Danny. No one they've ever come across is _this_ good at mimicry, and the copy under him even has the same little mole half-hidden in his hairline he does. Somebody new?

New has always meant dangerous, ever since the Portal.

Danny narrows his eyes, bares his teeth, and snarls, " _Tell me who you are!_ "

The fake snarls right back, a wordless, furious roar. He grabs Danny's hands and phases halfway through the floor. Danny yelps, losing his balance, and the fake pops right out again to flip _him_ flat on his back this time, hard enough to knock the air out of his 's left stunned and gasping, Jazz shouting his name. But the fake is ghost enough, strong enough to pin Danny's arms to the floor over his head.

"I'm _Danny_ ," the copy shouts raggedly. "Now just- give me a _minute_ to explain what's going-"

He's interrupted by a high, resonant buzz, followed by a sound like a popped cork. The copy's hair ruffles in the wind of a passing ecto blast, and they both look behind them to see a smoking hole in the wall.

"Get _away_ from my brother," Jazz orders, her mouth a grim line and not so much as a tremor to her hands. "That was a warning shot."

All of the fake's ferocity goes out like a blown candle. He sags, looks at Jazz like she'd already shot him. It's a wounded, worn out expression. This kid, if nothing else, is tired down to his bones. "Jazz- c'mon. Don't… don't do this. I know this is weird, but I'm still your brother, sort of."

Jazz may as well be carved from stone. "I'm not going to ask twice."

The fake looks at her for a few lingering seconds. Looks over his shoulder at the hole in the wall, perfectly placed between two family photos. Looks down at Danny, and Danny doesn't know what to make of the look this stranger with his own face gives him at all.

"I'm sorry," the boy says, and the fire in his palm winks out.

Danny shoves him off unceremoniously and bolts to his feet. The fake lands in a splay of limbs, grunting. Cautionary light sparkles at Danny's fingertips, embers ready to blaze at the first sign of trouble.

"Who _are_ you?" He asks again.

The fake sits up stiffly, rubbing his head. "I _told_ you. I'm Danny. I- I'm you."

"Try again," Jazz says. "There's already a Danny living here."

"I'm not lying, I-"

"Ghosts always lie," Danny and Jazz say in unison.

The fake stares, alarmed. "What? Lots of ghosts tell the truth. Sure, they can be jerks, and they can get pretty obsessive about really weird stuff, but-"

"It's interesting though," Jazz interrupts, looking thoughtful. "We've never seen a ghost like you before. At least not one so good at mimicry."

"Because I'm not _mimicking_ anybody!" The fake shouts with a frustrated sweep of his skinny arms. "I'm Danny Fenton. I'm Danny Phantom! I'm half-ghost and half-human, and this is my house and _you_ are my sister and- well, okay, _you're_ not my sister because I'm not _from_ here, I'm from a different timeline and I can't get to my home no matter how much I jump and- and I just want to know what's _happened_ to me!"

He groans, curling up on himself to in the crooks of his elbows. "Why has everything gotten so _crazy?_ "

Danny and Jazz look at each other, then back at the fake. Or maybe not a fake at all.

"Alright, I'll bite," Danny says reluctantly. "You're me, from- from another timeline, somehow. So tell me something only I'd know."

The other Danny lifts his head, startled. "Something only...? Um. Let's see- oh." His face gains a faint pink tinge as he says, "I, uh. I really liked it when Sam kissed me?"

Danny stiffens, barely hears Jazz gasp. " _Kissed?_ That never- she _never_ kissed me, before-" He shuts his mouth with a click of teeth. "Try again."

The other him looks surprised. "Really? Down in the lab, that time when Dad came down…? Or at the park, when Valerie was chasing us? _Really?_ "

"Really," Danny snaps. "Think of something else."

"I figured that was gonna be enough," he jokes weakly, holding up his hand when Danny glares. "Okay, okay. Gimme a second." He bites his lip, thinking. "Okay. I haven't shared this with anybody, so- I mean, it's kind of…."

"Spit it out," Danny snaps. The other looks at Jazz with a weird, apologetic shrug.

"Sorry. Um. Not long after the accident, it became pretty obvious that I couldn't- that I'd never have a shot at-" He swallows, his expression hard. "I don't want to be an astronaut anymore."

Silence.

Jazz lowers her gun at last, looks at Danny with quiet dismay. "That's- that's not true," she says. " _You_ still want to. Right?"

Danny can't quite meet her eyes. "Actually."

"But-"

"There's no way I'd be able to pass NASA's screenings," Danny interrupts. "My temp, my weight- you saw my bones on the x-ray- and I don't even want to _know_ how messed up by bloodwork probably is. Plus with how my grades have tanked-"

"But you've always wanted to be an astronaut!"

"I'm sorry," the other Danny says, looking miserable. "It was the only thing I could think of that'd convince you."

"It's okay," Danny replies. Jazz gapes.

" _Okay?_ " She echoes incredulously. "What does _that_ mean? Danny-"

" _Later_ ," he says, sharper than he meant to, and he tries to ignore her flinch. He sighs. "We'll talk about it later, okay? Once we've dealt with him." Danny shoots other Danny a dirty look.

"You _asked_ ," he protests.

"I wasn't expecting you to drop _that_."

The other Danny rolls his eyes and finally gets to his feet, not so much climbing to them as staggering. His breath hitches and he whines through clenched teeth, one hand jumping to his chest.

Jazz shakes her head, setting aside the argument she clearly wants to have, and takes a step toward him. "Are you okay?"

"I… I dunno," other Danny admits once he's caught his breath. "My chest's been hurting like crazy ever since evil future me did… _whatever_ it was he did to me."

Jazz and Danny share another look. "Evil… future you?" Danny asks uncertainly. "I don't think I like the sound of that."

"You don't know about that either? It's been, uh, kind of a huge deal for me." He hums, considering. "What month is it?"

Well that's definitely a weird question if there ever was one, but then again this whole afternoon is shaping up to be pretty high on the weird factor charts. "It's August. School started last week."

He narrows his eyes. "Sophomore year?"

"Uh, yeah?"

"So you took the C.A.T.?"

"Well, yeah? What does that have to do with-"

Other Danny ignores him, muttering into his fist. "But that doesn't make any _sense_. I was thinking maybe I just ended up a few months off, but you don't remember any of this, and you never had to deal with that future me…." He trails off, jerks his head to look at them and ask, "Ever hear of Clockwork?"

"Um…" Jazz looks at Danny, who shrugs.

"Master of Time? Smug know-it-all? Likes the color purple and is a totally huge jerk?"

"Never heard of them," Danny says. "Do they have something to do with... however it is you ended up here?"

"Uh, sort of, I think." He scratches his head. A bit of dirt cascades down his face and makes a mess on the tile. What the heck even happened to him? "It's kind of a long story, and frankly I don't know if I'll be here long enough to explain. Or if I should try to at all, since you weren't ever me and I'm not gonna become you. Probably."

"Thinking of running off?" Danny asks, a challenging flare of green spitting from his clenched fists. Other Danny shakes his head, looking a little amused rather than intimidated.

"No, no. I'd much rather just sleep for twelve hours, trust me. It's just that-" He huffs, frustrated. "I don't _understand_ what's happening."

"Then tell us what you do know," Jazz says in her best I'm Helping to Avoid Unnecessary Conflict Voice. "Maybe we can help."

Fractionally, the other Danny relaxes. "...Okay. I was in the future- my future, I guess- ten years after I apparently cheat on the C.A.T. Somehow, I dunno how yet, cheating on that test ended up kill-" He bites his lip. "A lot of people die. My parents, my sister-" Another apologetic glance Jazz's way, "Sam and Tucker. Mr. Lancer too. There was- will be?- an explosion at the Nasty Burger. And I guess I go kind of... psycho because of it?"

Jazz says, "I'm so sorry-"

"But it hasn't _happened_ yet!" The other Danny interrupts. "I mean, it has, but not to _me_. In my time nobody's gotten hurt. I never took the test. If I can just get back, there's a chance I can stop it from ever happening!" He scrubs his face, wincing when one ragged fingernail catches on a half-healed scab. "Look, the point is _my_ future is going to majorly suck because of me, and I saw it firsthand thanks to Clockwork and his time medallions."

"Time medallions?" Danny asks.

"These necklaces that let people stay in other times until they take it off. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but we stole a few and ended up meeting future Valerie and getting our butts handed to us by future me. Sam and Tucker almost died, but they got their medallions off in time so they should be back in my present." He sighs. "I hope they're okay. It's been _weeks_ since I-"

" _Stop_."

He blinks, tilting his head to look at Danny. "Something I said?"

"Sam and Tucker… _lived?_ "

"Uh, yeah? They weren't in the rubble so I can only assume they're back in my time-"

Danny jumps to his feet, has the other by his crusty shirt before he can react. "They survived the accident?!"

The other Danny makes a face, trying to shove him off. "I _just_ said that-"

"Not that one! I told you, I haven't _done_ any of this." He lifts the other Danny off his feet, trying to drag the truth out of him. A summer between their times has given him enough of a growth spurt to keep this other on his tiptoes, makes it easy to lift him with just one arm. "Did they survive the accident?"

" _What_ accident?"

" _The_ _accident_ , down in the lab! The one that made us a freak! Are you telling me the Sam and Tucker from your timeline lived through it?"

"Of course they lived! They weren't anywhere near the Portal when it turned on!"

Danny's throat works uselessly. He lets the other Danny go. Drops his hand, licks his lips, tries to think of anything. "...What?"

"I was the only one who went inside it," he clarifies impatiently. "They've been helping me deal with my powers and fighting ghosts for almost a year. Why are you acting so _weird_ about it?"

Danny can't-

He can't answer. He can't speak. He shuts his eyes and balls his fists and breathes in and out and tries not to remember. Alive. Alive. They're _alive_. Somewhere, somewhen out there, Sam and Tucker got to live.

Jazz tells it, her hand brushing his arm as an apology. "When Danny went into the Ghost Portal, Sam and Tucker went inside too. They… they didn't make it."

"I- what?" Other Danny shakes his head. "No, you can't be serious. Tucker- he wouldn't go near it. He said he'd be more likely to get-"

"-radiation poisoning than a meet-and-greet with Casper," Danny finishes, his voice thick. "And Sam didn't want to put on a jumpsuit, because-"

"...because she'd only put on something so tacky if it came in purple." The other Danny's face crumples. "But... but they _didn't_. They never went inside. It was just me."

"I dared them," Danny whispers. "I _dared_ them to go with me. I made a _game_ out of it. Tucker cracked a joke about thigh high boots. Sam couldn't get her zipper to work so I helped her with it. We all went inside. None of us expected it to _do_ anything, but I tripped over a wire, hit something on the wall. They screamed. I did too. But they stopped before I did."

The other Danny backs away, holds up his hands. "N-no- _stop-_ "

"The paramedics had to cut them out of their jumpsuits. Mom and Dad almost got shut down and arrested, but some government agency took over instead, cleared the charges so they could keep working. Sam and Tucker's parents blame me for killing them. I had to be taken out of school because the other kids think I'm a murderer too. I can't walk past a fast food joint without wanting to throw up because of the _smell-_ "

"Danny." Jazz's hands find his shoulders, pulling him close, grounding him. Reminding him. It's over. It already happened. They're dead. They're gone, and they can't come back. "It's okay, little brother. You're okay. You're safe."

A sob wrenches out of him anyway, a shredded noise that's not much of an attempt at laughter. "Oh- oh yeah? Just tell me everything's not my f- fault. Tell that to their _ghosts_."

The other Danny's breath catches. "They- they came back?"

"Yes," Jazz says. Danny laughs again, pulls away to look at this lucky version of himself, this boy crying about his future when Danny's own past is already a pile of wreckage.

"Of course they did!" He shouts. "And no matter what I do they just keep coming _back_. They _hate_ me, they blame me for everything, and I- I-"

Shit, he's crying again. And here he'd thought he'd finally finished crying over the sick green things that parade around wearing the faces of his dead friends. So much for that. He knuckles his eyes dry with an embarrassingly loud sniff. "Alright, enough. We're _done_ talking about them. Tell me how you got here."

The other Danny hesitates. He's such an open book about- about _everything_. Every raw, half-thought emotion flits across his face. He might as well come with a neon sign that flashes _tell me more_. There's only a couple months between them, but there's a whole year where their timelines skew. A whole year's worth of experiences, wins and loses and day-to-days so completely, totally different from each other. This Danny didn't kill Sam and Tucker. This Danny doesn't have an entire city think he's a monster. This Danny might have the same face as him, but he isn't like him at all. They're mirrors, but a gulf yawns at their feet. They might as well be strangers.

He wipes his eyes again, mouth trembling in a rictus grin. Has this other Danny ever known grief?

The other Danny's hand tightens at his chest, clutching at his black shirt. "Well, uh. After future me leveled the house, he attacked me. He- he pulled my time medallion off, and somehow fused it to my ghost half's core." He grimaces. "He meant to do something else with me after, because he was just trying to make sure I couldn't run off, but I guess something went wrong? I've been time-traveling ever since- and I guess _timeline-_ traveling too."

"How long has this been happening?" Jazz asks.

"I dunno. One month, five days, six hours, twenty-seven minutes, eighteen, nineteen, twenty seconds…." He goes still, eyes widening.

"That's pretty specific for an 'I dunno,'" Danny says.

"But I _didn't-_ I didn't _know_ how long it's been- how did I do that?" He staggers back a step, his other hand jumping to cover his heart too. Danny can see his shoulders shaking. "What's _happening_ to me?"

"Are you okay?" Jazz asks again. "You don't look so great."

She's right. He's looked pretty ragged the whole time, but now he looks like he's about three seconds away from puking or passing out, or both.

"I- it's hard to-" He makes an awful sound, something that clicks and grinds, too mechanical to sound human, and falls to his knees. Something in him _cracks_ with an eerie ringing, like clapping your hands in a tunnel. He cries out, his voice warping, or fading, light enveloping him-

" _Hey!_ " Danny yells, reaching out. But before he can do anything, the other boy goes boneless and vanishes in a perfect circle of blue light. His scream cuts short, and there's no trace of him left behind.

It's a few seconds of stunned silence before either of them move.

"What just-" Jazz shakes her head. "Where did he go?"

"I dunno," Danny mutters, staring at the burning, bubbling title his twin had left behind.

"He looked like he was in pain," she says, biting her lip. "At least Mom and Dad are out. There's no way we could have explained- _that_."

"Uh-huh."

Jazz frowns at him. "You're not thinking of going after him, are you? I don't think that's a can of worms we can afford to open."

"I don't care about _him_ ," Danny retorts. "I can barely take care of myself; what good would getting into whatever _his_ mess is do for us?"

"Then what?"

"If all that stuff he told us is true- being from a whole different timeline, and everything. Do you think… Do you think this Clockwork ghost is real?"

* * *

 _A/N: Next chapter definitely won't be up til December. It's written, but it needs quite a bit more polish than this one did and I've still got nine more days of NaNo to suffer through. Danny will make it back to his timeline though, so you can look forward to that!_

 _As always, if you have any questions or would like some kind of actual response to a review from me, please send me a PM or hit me up on my tumblr, anthropwashere._


	6. Chapter 6

_A/N: Well it's a month later than I promised, but here we are! Hopefully some questions are answered while new ones are raised._

* * *

Tucker's the first to arrive. Hands in his jean pockets, he shuffles from foot to foot, head ducked to keep the afternoon sun out of his eyes. It's a nice day, not too humid yet, and just enough of a breeze to stay cool. He casts an appraising glance over the park that's sprung up where a couple city blocks used to be, but sees no one around. The bushes and trees planted over the years have grown enough that the statue at the center can't be seen from the parking lot.

He turns back to the statue. It's a gratingly familiar sight. Twelve feet tall, all weather-stained bronze and concrete, depicting two young figures standing back to back. The human looks plaintively skyward, a toy space shuttle cradled in his hands. The ghost looks stoically toward the horizon, spine ramrod straight, fists clenched at his sides. The faces are at best a passing resemblance to the people they're supposed to represent, and of course that means Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom barely resemble each other.

 _Gone but not forgotten_ , the plaque beneath reads.

"Ain't that the truth," Tucker mutters.

Fifteen years since it happened, and people still leave flowers. Not as many as there used to be, but it's clear people still remember what Phantom did for Amity Park. Tucker smiles at the white bouquet of gladioli carefully wrapped in black paper and ribbon and placed between two pairs of bronze feet. He should message Lancer on Facebook, see how the old guy's doing these days. As usual, he feels a twinge of irrational guilt for not bringing anything. He quashes it with a scoff.

Danny hates the stupid thing anyway. The whole park's a waste of money that could have been spent on ghost-proofing the hospital or rebuilding whatever latest building got wrecked. Sam's spiteful about it, Danny's disdainful, and Tucker's just tired of this park and the lies it's built on.

He walks back out to the parking lot in time to see a sleek black Tesla pull up; an aggressive thing that doesn't look half as eco-friendly as it is. That's Sam all over though.

Sam gets out of the backseat- which means it's Tucker's turn this year to handle everything, apparently, thanks so much for the heads up. She takes a minute to speak to her driver, then waves the car off. There's a tension in her shoulders as she straightens, a stiffness to her clicking stride as she walks up to him that makes Tucker's jaw tighten with something like dread. He can sense the fight coming as clear as a cold front on the horizon. It happens every year they come here, and every year it gets a little bit worse. Tucker's a reactive type of guy, whereas Sam's always been the most aggressive of them all. Nobody can drive him up the wall like she does.

It's hard, not having Danny here to be their buffer.

"Hey," Tucker says.

"Hey." She's grown her hair out, pinned it back with a fancy glass hair stick shaped like a bunch of forget-me-nots. It's a delicate quirk that softens her business suit's asymmetrical angles and dark stripes.

"A little on the nose, isn't it?" Tucker asks, nodding toward it. She smiles, all teeth, and strides down the winding path toward the statue.

"I've got a meeting at seven with the mayor," she says over her shoulder. Tucker scowls, jogs to catch up.

" _Seriously?_ You know he can't be sure what condition he'll be in when he shows up."

"Today's the only day she had time to see me," she snaps, defensive. "And I have to be in Chicago tomorrow for-"

"Spare me," Tucker interrupts, disgusted. "We _said_ we'd make time for him. We _said_ we'd always be here for him, because no one else can be-"

"It's been _fifteen years!_ " She throws her hands up, her voice rising as she continues. " _You_ might be fine with dropping everything for him when he shows up with another crop of sob stories, but I'm _sick_ of it. He _knows_ how to fix this, he just won't because-"

"Because _what?_ You can't actually think he _enjoys_ this." She glares at him, sullen. Disbelief makes him laugh. "Jesus, you actually do. You're still _jealous_ , aren't you?"

She laughs right back, which isn't any answer at all.

"Alright, play it off," Tucker says. "But I know _exactly_ what being jealous of him looks like."

At least she winces at that, even if does try to play it off as fussing with her hair.

"So if you won't admit to that, will you at least admit you're sick of him?"

"I'm not sick of _him_. I'm sick of _this_. I'm sick of _handling_ him, of hiding him away from anybody who might recognize him because he still refuses to let even his parents know the truth."

"Because it'd break their hearts!" Which- ouch, _bad_ choice of words there.

She sneers like she didn't even hear him. "I'm _sick_ of pretending he's dead, and I don't care what he's said, there has to be a way to _fix_ this."

"You know he's tried everything-"

"No," she says coolly. "We _don't_ know that."

Tucker's watch beeps before he can reply, and their argument is cut short before they can really tear into each other. They retreat from the foot of the monument, wait quietly in the grass for the light show to start. Only a few seconds pass before a disorientingly complex sound, like the sigh of the ocean and the hiss of falling sand and the rustling of autumn leaves, fills the air around them. As the sound diminishes Tucker's ears pop, and a lurid blue light he's come to anticipate and dread scorches the sidewalk in a perfect circle. With a pop of displaced air a body falls out of empty space, sprawling limply at their feet.

Tucker thinks _unconscious_ and runs through a list of potential causes before his brain catches up with what- with _who_ \- he's looking at.

It's like looking at a pile of old Halloween decorations. Dirty, torn up rags draped over a stick-thin frame, matted hair, more scab than skin, no bag in sight. He's never looked as bad as this before, Tucker thinks. But- _oh_.

Danny's never shown up so _young_ either.

Wordlessly, Sam finds Tucker's sleeve, tugs on it like he might have been looking elsewhere when the fucking kid version of their absentee best friend busted back into their timeline. Tucker yanks his arm free just as Danny groans and comes to.

Danny rolls onto his hands and knees just in time to retch up a thin splash of fluid. His thin arms shake under his weight; his knifeblade shoulders strain with each cough. He spits, spits again, and sighs out something indistinct. Either he knows they're there and doesn't care, or he's just that unaware. In the shape he's in, Tucker's betting on the latter.

"Hey," Tucker says, his voice hitching.

Danny stiffens, ragged nails scratching lines in the ashy concrete. He eases back on his heels, slowly looks up at them. There's no recognition in his sunken eyes at first as he shifts his gaze from Tucker to Sam and back again. Then, he must find something familiar, something recognizable, because his eyes widen and his jaw drops. He looks briefly terrified.

" _Sam? Tucker?_ " He asks in a papery whisper. His vowels creak.

"Yeah, man," Tucker says with a forced smile. "It's us."

"Hey," Sam says, hushed.

Danny shakes his head feebly. He paws a lock of matted hair out of his eyes with a scabby hand. Forget Halloween decorations, he looks like he just walked off the set of a zombie flick. "I… Where am I? How _old_ are you guys?"

"You don't have to say it like that," Tucker protests with a weak laugh. "It's not like we've got grandkids and arthritis. We both turned thirty a few months back, that's all."

Danny looks pained, but that could just be from the jump. He's still wheezing a little, after all.

"Where am I this time?" Danny asks, getting to his feet. He sways, catches himself on the concrete base behind him without looking. "Oh, right, _when_. Man, I am so _sick_ of time travel."

Danny's cautious in his movements, younger than they've ever seen but already learning, the shift of bone and slide of muscle under grimy rags and skin that says changing, that says adapting, that says permanence. Tucker wonders how much of a mess Danny's insides are, or if this is still so early there's nothing more than a hitching heartbeat, a warning of what's to come.

"Welcome back," Tucker says, gently. Danny frowns at him.

"What do you mean?"

Sam huffs. "You're back in your own timeline again. I'd say happy anniversary, but you look like you crawled out of a dumpster fire so I'm guessing you haven't had a good time."

"Yeah? Well _you've_ got crows feet." He rubs his eyes with the heels of his dirty hands and misses Sam's nonplussed expression entirely. Shame Tucker didn't have his camera ready for that. "If I'm back in my timeline, why are you two so old?"

"We're _not_ old," Sam insists. "Why are you acting so weird? Did you hit your head or something?"

Danny glowers. "Did _you?_ You're acting like- like you know me!"

"We do, man," Tucker says quietly. His stomach has dropped down to his shoes. He'd forgotten. They both had. They'd forgotten this visit hadn't happened yet, and now here it is and they aren't the least bit prepared for it.

"Well I don't know _you_. I don't know what's going on at all. I've been getting yanked from one crazy timeline to another with no way to control it! I've seen like three other versions of myself, I have no idea when the last time I ate was, and the few hours of sleep I _have_ managed to get recently was rudely interrupted by a pack of _wolves!_ So please, whatever Sam and Tucker you are, _just tell me what's going on!_ "

Tucker walks nearer to Danny to get a better look at him. Under the dirt and grime and half-healed scrapes, he's young. He's so young. Clumsy hands and feet, bones yanked overlong by puberty, skinny as a rail but still not half as wiry as he'll grown up to be. And his face- he doesn't even have the scar yet.

"How old are you?" He asks softly. Danny scowls.

"Fourteen. Why does it matter?"

Sam crosses her arms, taking a step back. "Fuck, seriously?"

Even expecting that answer, Tucker goes cold. "How long have you been time traveling?"

"Three months, nine days, sixteen hours, thirty-four minutes, fifteen seconds," Danny rattles off, then blinks owlishly. "How am I _doing_ that?"

Tucker bites his lip and looks at Sam. She nods, understanding if still reluctant. "I'll cancel my appointment," she sighs, pulling out her phone and walking toward the parking lot. Tucker looks back at Danny.

"It's a long story. A _really_ long story. Let's get you out of here for now before somebody sees you, okay?"

Danny still looks at him like he's an obstacle or a threat; guarded, wary despite his weariness. But he nods, willing to trust a friend. A friend who is now twice his own age, but they had been best friends, once.

They take him to a hotel, the easiest option these last couple years. Sam pays and gives Tucker the spare key card to squirrel Danny in through a side door. There are cameras, but with a couple taps on his phone it's like they were never there. It's a good room, not ritzy but _comfortable_. There's a bed Danny could practically swim in and a little living room with a couch and coffee table, as well as the expected desk, TV and mini fridge. Sam booked a room on the top floor with a balcony, just like Danny prefers.

Well, will prefer. Eventually.

Danny lurches toward the white fabric couch with clear intent to sleep for a week, but Sam catches him by the elbow. "If you sit down I'll have to buy that couch, and it's frankly too tacky to burn."

"Aww," he grumbles, but stays where he is. Sam lets go, grimacing when her hand comes away smeared black and brown.

" _You_ are showering before you touch anything," she says, pointing him toward the bathroom.

"Gladly," he replies fervently. "But uh, I'm kind of fresh out of clean… everything."

"Don't worry, I'll take care of that." To Tucker she says, "Get some food in him before he passes out. I'll be back in an hour with clothes and the usual basics."

"Got it."

Sam gives Danny one last appraising look at the front door, probably trying to mentally narrow down shirt sizes. God, he's so small. All the extra clothes they bought for him in the past are useless now. "Make sure he scrubs, Tuck. He _reeks_."

"Hey," Danny protests, but without much effort. The poor kid really does smell like a dumpster fire.

So, after promising both that he wouldn't go anywhere and that yes, Danny wouldn't go anywhere either- the shortest he's ever stuck around is four days, after all- Tucker gently shoves him into the shower and rings up room service for as much steak as possible. To appease Sam, he orders a double helping of steamed vegetables instead of potatoes. While he waits he kicks back on the couch, feet up on the coffee table, and texts Sam a few things to buy. Toothpaste, deodorant, scissors. They're gonna have to cut most of his hair off, with how matted it is. She texts back a quick thanks and reminds him to call Jordan.

"Hell," he mutters to himself, and switches over to his recent texts to bring up her cell number. She picks up on the fourth ring, music hastily being turned down in the background.

" _Hey you,_ " she says, sounding pleased.

"Hey yourself," Tucker replies, putting a sly grin to his voice. "I just wanted to let you know I won't be home tonight."

" _He says, as if this is an annual occurrence I'm somehow not aware of by now_."

He snorts. "Alright, that's fair."

" _Uh-huh. How are Jazz and Sam doing?_ "

"Oh, y'know. Sam is Sam and Jazz is- she's taking some extra time with her parents."

" _Are you and Sam fighting tooth and nail again?_ "

"It's bloodless so far, but if I come home with any incriminating scratches down my back I assure you, they'll be of the strictly platonic and spiteful kind."

She laughs. " _I'll only be worried if you've got that wine red lipstick she wears smeared all over your collar._ "

"Aw, no, c'mon. Sam's the evil step-sister I never wanted."

" _You're no Cinderella._ "

"And _you_ are no Prince Charming."

" _Inaccurate, I am very charming._ "

"That's news to me!"

Jordan laughs, though it softens into a sigh that could almost be called wistful. " _I wish I could of met Danny. You really care about him, even after all this time. It's sweet_."

Not for the first time, Tucker wishes he could tell her the truth. But this isn't his secret to tell, and Danny's made it- will make it- will have made it- whatever- clear that no one else gets to know. He sighs. "He was my best friend."

" _I know. You okay?_ "

Not really. Not at all. "I'm okay. What are you up to?"

" _Grading papers, joy of joys_."

"Ouch. Good luck."

" _You too. Tell Sam and Jazz I said hi, and if they need a stiff drink they know who to call_."

"Will do. Love you."

" _Love you too._ "

Tucker kills the call and tosses his phone aside. He's tired. He'd been hoping for an easy visit. He'd been hoping Danny would be their age, or close. Instead, there's a battered teenager in the shower who has no idea what's coming for him. He's only been at this three _months_.

Tucker groans, slips his fingers under his glasses to rub his eyes. If anyone could use a stiff drink tonight, it's him.

Sam's not back yet by the time Danny's curled up in a bathrobe on the bed, scarfing down steak at light speed. Tucker's moved to sit in the office chair by the balcony door so they can talk, but frankly he doesn't even know where to start. So, feeling a little awkward, he watches Danny out of the corner of his eye as he pretends to mess around on his phone.

Danny's cleaned up well enough, considering. His hair is still a floppy, matted wreck and it looks like some of his scabs have opened back up. His bare shins have weird, looping scars on them. When he rolls the overlong sleeves of his bathrobe up to keep them out of his plate there are scars to match on his forearms. Dimly, Tucker remembers seeing them years ago, when they were twenty or twenty-one maybe, but never any other time. That'd been the youngest they'd seen Danny before now, though, and his scars tend to fade in years rather than decades.

Still, Tucker's thirty now. It's been long enough since he was Danny's age; he's forgotten how young fourteen really is.

"You're staring."

Tucker blinks, hastily looking away. "Sorry." God, what's taking Sam so long?

"It's okay, I think." Danny swallows, wipes his mouth. "Who were you talking to while I was in the shower?"

"You heard?"

He shrugs. "I thought you were talking to me at first."

"Oh. No, I just called my wife real quick to let her know I wasn't coming home tonight."

This makes Danny gape. "You're _married?_ "

Tucker grins. "Thank you for the tone of surprise, it means so much."

"No, no, sorry, it's just- in high school you're- you _were_ \- kind of, y'know…."

"Hopeless with girls?" Tucker finishes for him. Sheepishly, Danny nods.

Tucker pulls up a picture of him and Jordan from a couple months ago on his phone. They're posing with drinks in hand at a bar, her red curls spilling over her shoulder and arms jangling with bracelets. He stands up to show Danny the photo, smiling. "Her name's Jordan. She was a bartender at a local place my friends dragged me a few times to in college. Lucky for me I pulled my head out of butt a few years after you left, otherwise I might not have managed a real conversation with her."

Danny's face falls as he looks at the picture. "I ...I'm not going home again, am I?"

Tucker winces, pocketing his phone. Hell. "No. You aren't."

He sets his mostly-eaten dinner aside, places a hand to his chest. Tucker hopes Sam remembers to buy some nail clippers to hack those talons off before he hurts himself. "The time medallion. It did something to me, right? Something I can't fix."

"Yeah."

"And you two. You were there, waiting for me. You knew I'd be there."

"At your monument?" Tucker smiles at the bemused expression that gets him. "Guess you didn't notice it. There's a big bronze statue of you where the Nasty Burger used to be."

"Ugh, thank you for raising more questions." He ticks them off on his fingers. "Why is there a park where the Nasty Burger was? Did the Nasty Burger still blow up? What happened to evil me? What'd I get a statue for?"

Tucker holds up his hand, laughing. "One at a time, dude. It blew up a couple days after we came back from Dan's timeline. The park's a commemorative thing for both halves of you. It started off as just the statue but there was a-" He hesitates, not sure he wants to get into _that_. "-uh, a pretty major ghost fight a couple years after that leveled the surrounding buildings, so the mayor just opted to turn it all into a park. The statue's there because you- future you- uh, time traveling future you, _not_ the evil one- faked your- fourteen yours, not his- human death and Phantom's destruction so nobody would look for either of you. Oh, and Dan's timeline got langoliered."

Danny squints at him, baffled. "You lost me."

"At which part?"

" _Every_ part." He sighs. "How about you tell me who 'Dan' is first?"

Tucker blinks. Huh. "Y'know, the evil you slash Vlad hybrid ghost. Mister big, bad, and inevitable?"

"Stop, stop, _stop_." Danny looks faintly nauseous. "Okay, one: a me and Vlad hybrid? Eew. Two: _eeew_. Three: _Dan?_ Where did _that_ come from? That's the name of a harried accountant, not a homicidal supervillainous ghost."

Tucker laughs. "I know! But that's what _you've_ always called him so we just kinda went with it."

"I- _what?_ "

A knock at the door finally heralds Sam's return. Tucker jumps up to help her with several department store bags, dumping the lot of them on the foot of the bed.

Danny's jaw drops. "S- _Sam_ , hey! What am I going to do with all this? Did you buy out the whole men's section or what?"

Sam yanks a pair of orange-handled scissors off its cardboard packaging and starts to clip tags with harried efficiency. She's taken the forget-me-not hair stick out while she was gone, replaced it with a regular ponytail. Tucker opts not to comment. "You can take a bag with you, and the rest of this stuff will be here for you next year. I grabbed some stuff a couple sizes bigger, since we've seen the last of your teen years now that you've showed up."

Danny almost seems to shrink in his oversized bathrobe, looking at the pile of clothes with something like dread.

Sam hesitates, sets the scissors down. She huffs and levels a glare at Tucker. "I guess you didn't actually tell him anything, huh?"

"I, uh, I mostly just confused him," Tucker admits.

"I have to do everything around here, don't I?" She shoves clothes out of the way, enough to make a space she can comfortably sit, and waits for you to do the same. She looks at the bathroom rather than Danny as she talks.

"The time medallion in your chest isn't special," she begins, as blunt as ever. "We've gotten that much out of Clockwork, at least. It's just like all the other ones he had, made up of the same magic and metal. What made it special was how it fractured when Dan fused it to your core."

"What do you mean?" Danny asks.

"Time is… complicated," she says. "A lot more complicated than I ever imagined. Maybe it's because of Clockwork and the Observants getting their hands all over everything, or maybe it's all just like this anyway and they do the best they can to keep the whole, I dunno, time-space continuum of the multiverse from imploding." She flaps her hand dismissively. "Point is, there isn't just a single timeline. There's millions."

"Maybe billions," Tucker adds. "Not like we'll ever know. Clockwork won't tell us much, and most of what Sam's saying is just stuff future you conjectured to us in our past."

"My head already hurts," Danny jokes, but nods at Sam to go on.

"The function of a time medallion is to allow someone to remain within a point of time they aren't meant to be in- like when we went to Dan's future. The second Tucker and I took the medallions off we popped back to our present. When that happened, _that_ future was still going to be _our_ future, right up until the time medallion reacted weirdly to your ghost core and sent you time traveling. Once that happened, the timeline-" She makes a face, gesturing vaguely. "- _fractured_ is kind of too strong a word, but it's the only one I can think of right now. You get what I mean?"

"Like the flip of a coin?" Danny offered. "The medallion breaks one way, I don't start time traveling; the medallion breaks another way, I do?"

"Exactly. We know this because you've met- will meet, I guess- other Dannys this happened to and you- will have told us about it?" She grimaces. "Tenses, _ugh_. You're going to have told us about Dannys that had evil ghost futures too, but they managed to fix things."

"Well, most of 'em," Tucker adds reluctantly. "You've met- uh, _will_ meet- some Dannys who got the short stick too, ended up dead or worse."

"Okay, so where does uncontrollable time travel fall on the good-bad list?" Danny asks. "And more importantly, can I _fix_ this?"

Tucker reaches over to touch Sam's knee before she can open her mouth, giving her a warning look. She just rolls her eyes and slaps his hand aside. "Clockwork is a real piece of work once you get to know him," she says. "We've only tracked down his lair maybe a dozen times over the years-"

"It moves," Tucker explains. "We never know _when_ it'll be."

"-yeah, and the few times we managed to get a conversation out of him he just gave us this smug look and said stuff like,' _There's nothing to be done for Danny Fenton. Even I won't meddle here._ '" She pulls a shirt off the top of the pile and starts to yank at price tags and size stickers, her mouth a bitter twist. "What kind of condescending bullshit is that? Future you told us about plenty of times that tick-tock lunatic has cheated to save other Dannys out there, so clearly this is something personal-"

"Sam," Tucker interrupts with resigned patience. "Ease up. He hasn't even had a chance to wear that yet."

"Huh?" She looks down, at the shreds she's made of the stitching in a shirtsleeve. "Oh. Sorry, Danny."

"It's okay," Danny says, amused. "It's not like you didn't buy me two dozen other shirts or anything." He tries to run his fingers through his hair but catches on nothing but knots. He tugs his hand free, glares at his ragged nails. "How'd you guys know to meet me?"

"You've shown up there every year since we were fourteen," Tucker says. "Same day, same time. Just about down to the minute. Not in any particular order though. You don't have any control of it; at least, not that you've ever- will have ever- told us. It's just…." He looks at Sam, trying to find a word. Luck? Kindness? Clockwork playing with his favorite toy?

She shakes her head. They don't know why. Maybe they never will.

Danny looks between their faces, sighing. "Well, that's convenient, sort of. I'll be able to rely on you guys every couple of months at least."

Tucker winces. Sam goes back to tearing price tags off. And Danny- well, Danny's always been smarter than anyone ever gave him credit for. "How long- Tucker said I don't come home, but _you_ just said I do. So what's the deal?"

"I meant that-" Tucker hesitates. God, this sucks. "You don't come home to _stay_. The longest we've ever seen you was, what, a month? Five weeks? And then you got pulled away again."

Danny's next breath rattles in his throat, one hand pressed to his chest. "That's- Okay. That's okay. That's what you two know. But it's like you said; this is all a coin flip. There are Dannys that had this happen to them and they got better, right? They fixed it, even if the me you two know doesn't. Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones."

Another couple of seams pop in Sam's hands.

Danny sinks into his bathrobe, looking miserable. "I guess not."

"We can't know for sure," Tucker says. "You get really tight-lipped after a couple years. Uh, _your_ years. It's been all over the place for us."

"You stop telling us anything beyond vague details, brush us off and tell us you can handle it even as we're stitching you back together because you never stop playing the hero. You'll tell us it's to keep from meddling in your own timeline any more than you have to." Sam bares her teeth at a memory. Danny still flinches.

" _Years?_ " He echoes, like it's finally sinking in, and Tucker aches with a grief he hates himself for feeling. How dare he feel pity, when he can't even imagine the hell Danny will go through? The hell he's already been through?

"Yeah," Tucker says, softly. "I'm sorry. We both are. But you need to know the truth. It's gonna get worse for you."

His eyes flutter closed. "How much worse can it get?"

Sam drops the ruined shirt to reach out and pat his ankle. Her nails must brush the sensitive scars on his leg, because he flinches away with a sharp intake of breath. Sam bites her lip, but goes on. "The medallion in your chest, it…. It's going to mess you up pretty bad. You won't let us help with that either, after a while. It's going to- it's going to reshape you. A lot of your human half is going to get… repurposed."

She pauses. Danny says nothing, so still it's almost like he fell asleep- no. He's too tense for that. "It's because your core is trying to absorb the medallion. If you were a normal ghost it probably wouldn't be so bad, but your human half throws a wrench into things. You have some time before it'll start to show, but once you get that scar on your face-"

" _Sam!_ "

She throws a scowl at Tucker. "Oh, so what? It's hardly any kind of spoiler. Danny gets lots of scars-"

Tucker groans. "You're _killing_ me here."

"What'd _I_ do?"

"Seriously? He's barely been doing this three months and you're trying to drop all the worst of the bullshit early, and you don't see anything _wrong_ with that?"

"Don't you think it'd be better if he had a little forewarning? Maybe if he knows what'll happen to him he can try to _avoid_ the worst of it!"

"You know what Danny's said about that. His timeline's set in stone."

"It's only ' _set in stone_ ' because he stopped trying to fight it!"

" _Guys!_ "

Tucker freezes, faces inches from Sam's and not sure when he jumped to his feet. He looks back at Danny. God, but he's swallowed up by the king-sized bed. He can't remember being so frail at fourteen.

"Please," Danny says miserably. "I know you're all grown up now and there's clearly a few levels to this argument I'm missing here, but can you maybe, just once, _not_ fight?"

Damn.

Tucker backs off first. "I'm sorry. I just don't want to freak you out anymore than we absolutely have to."

Sam nods begrudgingly. "I just don't want you to go through what you've already gone through, if that makes sense."

"It doesn't," Danny says through a badly smothered yawn. "But thanks."

They gather up his new clothes, make neat piles of For Now and For Later, let Danny pick out something comfortable to sleep in, and then Sam nods toward the balcony.

"Tucker," she says in a tone that brooks no argument. Oh boy.

"Be right back," he says to Danny, who only grunts as he settles deeper into the blankets. Poor kid. "You gonna be alright?"

" _Tucker_ ," Sam insists.

He purses his lips, giving Danny a Tired Look. Danny just barely hides a grin behind the comforter. Good. "I'm coming, I'm coming."

He follows her out onto the skinny balcony, shutting the door behind him to lean against it as he crosses his arms over his chest. "Alright, what's got you so tense?"

"He's fourteen," she bites out, as if that explains anything.

"Uh, yeah. I got that."

"He's _fourteen_."

" _Yeah_ , I got that."

"Then-"

He cuts her off. "I know what you're gonna say and the answer is _no_. Not this year, at least."

She stares at him, brow furrowing with disbelief. "We never knew we'd see him this early. There might be the way we actually can save him!"

"Or kill him!" Tucker winces, remembering too late to keep his voice down. "He can barely _stand_ right now. He needs to sleep for a week and about fifty square meals, but he'll be lucky to get half of that. He's in no shape to go gallivanting through the Ghost Zone on a wild goose chase!"

"But-!" But Sam catches herself, chews on her lip as she thinks. "Then I'll go, alone."

He scoffs. "And what are you gonna do, beg Clockwork to fix what he hasn't given a shit about so far? You gonna try to Thermos a ghost that can stop time?"

"I'll think of something! We have to _try_. Seeing him like this, it-" Her voice catches. "-Knowing what he'll grow up to be like. I don't want that for him, even if we'll never get to see him. He doesn't deserve what's coming."

Tucker drops his arms, steps away from the door to rest his elbows on the balcony. It's night now, a few stars bright enough to cut through the light pollution. He's never been interested enough in constellations to pick out more than Orion, and it's the wrong season for that. He takes a deep breath, lets it out slow. "Me too."

"I- oh." She joins him against the railing, her arm not quite brushing his. "Well. I'm glad we're on the same page for once."

"Sure," he says. "But the Fentons are a bit too busy at the hospital to let you in, so good luck getting through their security system."

"Wait, what? Are they okay? Is that why Jazz isn't here?"

Tucker squints at her. "She didn't tell you?"

"She texted me she couldn't make it today, that's all. What happened?"

Damn it, Jazz. "Jack had a heart attack two days ago."

Sam hisses through clenched teeth. " _Shit_."

"He's stable now, but Jazz couldn't leave her mom alone after that. Not without… y'know."

"Yeah. God."

"She really didn't tell you?"

Sam shifts uneasily. "Jazz and I don't really… talk anymore. She just said you knew what was up. When you didn't say anything at the park I figured it wasn't serious."

"I thought you _knew_."

She sighs, shifts to brace her hands on the railing, setting her shoulders and letting her head hang. "Should… should we tell him?"

Danny never said anything about a heart attack, in the past. Did he know, and choose not to warn them? Or were they kind tonight, and spared him the worry for one more thing out of his control? There's no knowing, not until the next visit. Even then, Danny might not say. Tight-lipped is right. "...No," he says eventually. "It would only scare him, and he doesn't need that right now."

Sam nods, then makes a soft noise of surprise. "Oh man, he doesn't even know about _Jazz_ , does he?"

"Oh god, you're right." Tucker can't help but laugh a little. "This is so _weird_."

She laughs too. "It's always weird with him."

"Yeah, but usually he's the one with answers. I mean, how much do we even say? What if we mess it up somehow and make it worse for him?"

"Well, it's like Danny said- _will have_ said, ugh. Whatever happens when he visits us is a constant, isn't it? Everything we remember together always matches up. So… we can't mess up that badly if we still remember him, right?"

She sounds like she's trying to convince herself, or at the very least pulling all this out of her ass. Tucker laughs again. "They should teach this kind of crap in college."

"I don't think a regular physics class ever covered this. Maybe we should have taken, what, quantum mechanics? Quantum something-or-other, probably."

"Our bad, right?"

She smiles, standing up straight. "Yeah. Definitely our bad."

"You gonna try and track down Clockwork still?"

"...No. Not tonight, at least." She slips past Tucker, rests her hand on the doorknob. "I might call Jazz, let her know what's going on with Danny."

"She'd appreciate that."

He follows her back into the hotel room, quietly shutting the door behind him. Danny's out cold, slumped and gently snoring. Sam hesitates at the foot of the bed, hands clenched.

"I'll be back tomorrow morning," she says after a moment. "Let me know if anything happens, okay?"

"Sure thing."

Tucker lets his shoulders relax once she's gone, tension bleeding from him and leaving only exhaustion behind. It could have been worse, considering. He kicks his shoes off, quietly empties his pockets onto the desk, and grabs a spare blanket from the little closet next to the bathroom. Sleeping on a couch always messes up his neck, but whatever. He kills the lights, using his cell phone to navigate around the piles of stuff Sam bought and the coffee table. He still stubs his toe on the edge of the couch, but manages not to make any noise about it.

It's only once he's settled down and gotten comfortable that Danny, the little sneak, speaks up. "Tucker?"

" _Ggh-!_ Jeez, I thought you were asleep!"

"Sorry."

Tucker rolls his eyes. "What's up? You okay over there?"

"I'm okay. I just wanted to know. Um. How… how old have you guys seen me?"

Tucker can't answer that one. It would be too cruel. "...Go to sleep, Danny."

"...Right."

* * *

 _A/N: Thank you for the reviews, you're all lovely. The next chapter is written, but it badly needs editing. I hope you all are excited to get to the heart of all this time travel stuff!_


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N: Phew! Sorry about the wait; my brain decided to take a ~30,000 word detour into another fandom (nothing posted yet, just a lot of WIPs). Hopefully this big chapter makes up for it though!_

* * *

It's such a _relief_ to be around the familiar again. Cars and houses and restaurants and streets, all of it almost exactly as he expects Amity Park to look. Sure, he might have ended up in the year he was born, but with how far he's traveled a couple decades is barely worth noticing.

With familiar territory, it's _so_ much easier to set up shop. There's plenty of food that's plenty easy to steal, decent enough medical supplies, and good clothes are an invisible flight through a department store away. Most importantly of all, there's _camping gear._ Big, practical, brightly colored camping gear. And it's fall now, just cool enough to warrant cozy layers but not cold enough to regret sleeping out in the woods like the homeless freak he is.

He can almost pretend like he's on vacation!

There's cause for all this, of course. He remembers this year, these two months living on the outskirts of his home town. Normally he prefers to hop from hotel to hotel, overshadowing clerks long enough to mark a room taken and paid for so he can sleep as long as he likes. Clean sheets, hot water, all the garbage continental breakfast he can eat- an errant time traveler's paradise. And here he is, stuck with sleeping bags and canned food instead. _Ugh_.

Past him better be grateful he's doing all this for him, if _he_ has anything to say about it.

In the failing afternoon light, he appraises his little camp built for two and nods, satisfied. It's not the prettiest or most high tech setup he could have gone with, but then, pretty and high tech isn't what he's aiming to teach, is it?

He grins. Him? Teaching? This'll be good for a laugh- on this side of things, at least. He doesn't remember laughing much, the first time around.

 _Him?_ Teaching? Ha!

Crouching, he stokes the campfire with a branch stripped of its yellowed leaves. He hasn't started up the stew yet since it'll just boil over once he has to rush pell-mell into the forest. He'll have time, later. As he feeds dry twigs to the fire he thinks of FentonWorks, and of the young couple that's only a few years older than he is now. He hasn't even been been born yet, in this timeline. He's still not used to it; unable to step foot in the house he grew up in.

Not for the first time he misses his mom's cooking, his dad's boisterous laughter, his sister's coddling. He misses coming home- after beating up the ghost of the day, more often than not- to the smell of burgers or pasta or the dreaded Leftover Nights. Good, hearty meals he didn't have to make himself from stolen ingredients, shared with a family that he could still call his.

He laughs, tossing the branch aside. Now isn't the time to get all wistful. He'll have his hands busy with blood and tears soon enough, but after- yes, after he's handled his past, he can look to the future again. He'll fix this, no matter what his future self had to say about it. For now, he's waiting-

" _Nngh!_ "

Sudden pain cuts through him like a knife, taking his breath with it. He staggers back from the campfire, gasping, clutching at his aching chest. For one terrible instant he thinks he's wrong after all, that he's doomed to die here, that no younger self will appear after all. But- no. _No_. He has to be right. He _knows_.

He stands tall, his sternum clicking its protest, and he waits. His past self will show up far from him, that's fact. There was no way for him to recognize where his past would appear, so he'd just picked a clearing near the stream and called it home. What's one fallen tree in a forest, right? He evens his breathing, waits for the smallest flash of blue light to leak through the undergrowth-

There!

He's off at once, running so quickly he doesn't quite touch the ground. It's long, awful seconds before he hears the first scream, bitten ragged with pain. He forgoes the pretense of running at all, blurs away from one second to another, and then there he is.

One look and he regrets not grabbing his first aid kit. Distracted, anxious, not thinking clearly. _Idiot_. He knows- remembers- that it isn't as bad as it looks, but it's still a worrying amount of blood.

Past Him is fetal in a burnt-black clearing, the smell of vaporized dead leaves and rainwater and pine smoke heavy in the air. Past Him is younger, years younger, and he's wearing brand new clothes and there's a bulky bag beside him that must weigh as much as he does- not saying much, since _god_ , but he's skinny. His face is a twisted mess of snot and tears and pain, which makes sense, considering he's got a tree branch stuck right through his forearm. Phased, rather than pierced, and all the more brutal for it.

"Hey," Danny calls out over his past self's screams. And again, " _Hey!_ "

Past Him hiccups shock, twitching away from the tree and only succeeding in wrecking his arm a little bit more. He goes white as a sheet, mouth yawning for a scream that gets tangled up in his throat. Danny winces in sympathy, holding up his empty hands to get the kid's attention.

"It's okay," he says, trying to speak calmly though his own heart is racing. "It'll be okay. I'm here to help you. I just want to help."

It takes Past Him a few tries to make a coherent sentence. "W-who- _hhgk-_ are you?"

"I'm you," Danny replies patiently, and rolls up his sleeve to display his own forearm. It's been years now, but he still has two faint circles there, noticeable even at this distance. Ghost healing speeds everything up, but scars still take a long time to fade.

Past him is too distracted by pain to really react to that, which is fair. He just huddles a little closer to the log and looks like he'd love nothing more than to never move again. Danny sighs.

"Okay. We can call this lesson number one. When you time travel, you always, always, _always_ need to phase. It'll be a pain in the ass until you get used to doing it, but the alternative is getting stuck in a log. Enjoying this so far?"

"Nnn- _hhfh-_ no..."

"Yeah, I figured as much." He kneels beside his past. It is, briefly, very weird. He remembers this moment from when he'd been fourteen years old and shredding his nails against dry bark, jaw clenched so tight his teeth should crack. He remembers the scraping and tugging of the branch in his arm, muscles rigid, his hand spasming. He remembers looking up at a young, leanly-muscled man with wild eyes and a menacing grin. He remembers being so certain that this was how he was going to die.

Flash forward and now _he's_ the menacing stranger looming over a defenseless, injured kid in the middle of a forest.

Hmm. Awkward.

"Okay," he says, "I'm not gonna yank you free. I'd do more damage, and you've already pulled some muscle out like a champ- no no, _don't_ look. Trust me on this. Just- hold still, okay? I'll try not to make this any worse than it has to be."

Well _that_ wasn't menacing or anything. So sue him, he's nervous. It's _weird_ , meeting himself like this.

"I'm gonna cut the branch instead of phasing you off it for now, because we're about a mile from camp and I'd like to minimize your blood loss as much as possible. I'll fly us back so it'll be easier on you. That all sound good?"

"Hhh- _hhgn-_ yeah-"

"Awesome, I love it when I'm on the same page as myself."

Past Him's eyes are starting to get a little glassy, which means it's time to shut up and move. It's quick work to rip his unrolled shirtsleeve off- he _really_ should have grabbed the first aid kit, way to drop the ball there, Fenton- and tear it into strips to staunch the bleeding and tie the branch in place. A quick slash of ecto-energy cuts the branch free. Past Him _writhes_ , clawing at the still-smoking ground and his leg both, a shriek scraped through his bared teeth.

"Sorry, sorry!" Danny says hastily. Probably should have warned him, oops. "Sorry. I'm gonna pick you up now, so hang on."

"My buh- _bag_ ," Past Him gasps.

"Got it." Another flare of energy to summon the bag, and he swings it over his shoulder, absently adjusting the strap to fit his broader frame. He remembers this bag; remembers a Sam who knew what to expect, and knew what he'd benefit most from. Sturdy quality, nondescript color, lots of pockets. Past him is gonna lose it before his sixteenth birthday, if he's lucky. "You just came from seeing our Sam and Tucker, right?"

"Muh- _hhgh- hh-_ month ago."

Danny scoops him up bridal style, wincing when this earns him another strangled cry. Past him curls like a pill bug, glaring daggers. "I warned you, sorry!"

He flies for camp, talking as he goes. He remembers that too, now that he's here again. How he'd latched onto the rambling voice of his weird future self as a distraction from the fucking _hole_ in his arm. The memory makes him ramble more. "Once you're stitched up I can give you something for the pain. It's just over the counter stuff, but it'll take the edge off for now. If you need something stronger I can steal some tomorrow, okay? I'll need to go into town for more supplies anyway, so don't stress it. All you need to think about right now is not passing out, okay? You're gonna be fine. This isn't so bad. I know it hurts right now, but you'll be okay soon. Just breathe, nice and steady, yeah, like that. I've got you. You'll be okay. You'll be just fine."

Back at camp, Danny lays him on the spare blanket he'd laid out just for this. "Keep pressure on that," he orders. "I'll be right back."

He doesn't hear the weak reply, already rifling through the tent for his trusty kit. It's been through hell with him- if you want to call bouncing around the infinitude of forced trans-temporal hopscotch "hell," which hey, some days. It's dented and stained and the red cross on its lid is just about scratched gone. It still closes though, which is good enough for him. Kit in hand, he drops his past self's bag near the edge of the blanket and kneels down beside the boy.

"Hold still," he says, and hands him a piece of old leather. "Put that in your mouth. I don't need you biting our tongue off, okay?"

Field surgery done by an amateur is, as expected, kind of a disaster. It's easier than it would be if either of them were anyone else; it's useful, sometimes, to be a couple of freaks. Past Him is too much of a ghost to bleed out from something as minor as this, and Danny's too inured by years of stitching himself back together to allow his hands any hesitation.

"It's kind of nice to be the living proof I don't fuck this up and kill you," Danny remarks lightly as he prods and massages the twisted muscles back into place.

Past Him gives him a look of deepest loathing.

Eventually, the wound is sewn and cleaned and bandaged, and it's over. Past Him sprawls out on the least bloody corner of the blanket and just lays there and breathes. He's gray-faced and shaking, skin cold to the touch. Danny gives him a bottle of water and a bag of trail mix and, as an afterthought, pulls another blanket out of the tent to toss over him.

"Sip slow, eat slower," he says. "I'll get dinner started once I've cleaned up."

Canned soup takes basically zero effort to heat over a campfire, so he keeps one eye on Past Him and makes lists as he stirs. What will need to be stolen, priority versus indulgence. Medical supplies, obviously. More bandages. Ice too, for the swelling and for storage. It's kind of weird, having perishables around. Fresh fruit, definitely. Red meat, for the iron and protein- or would that fall under an indulgence? No no, Past Him needs it. Well, in a few days. For now he should probably stick to chicken broth. He's had a hard time of it; too much rich food will just make him sick. Yeah, alright. That'll do, for now.

He ladles out two steaming bowls and plops down on the blanket. Past Him twitches like it's a habit. Danny doesn't blame him. He remembers the first year like a bad dream, memories springing unbidden that still make his heart race over nothing. _Trauma_ , Jazz would say if she were here. _No shit_ , Danny would retort. He doesn't have the looping scars on his arms and legs anymore, but they're still a raw pink on Past Him. He remembers, even if his skin doesn't.

A flicker of green energy levitates the bowls, leaving his hands free to gather up a pile of soft things to prop Past Him up. "Hope you're hungry, because I'm not letting you sleep 'til the bowl's empty."

Past Him stares. "How- how are you _doing_ that?"

His voice is weak. That should pass soon. It has to. Not like either of them can risk a trip to a hospital. "Doing what?"

"I can't make stuff float."

"Oh. Practice," Danny nods at one bowl, setting it down beside Past Him and plucking his own out of the air. "We'll get to that."

"Um. We will?"

"Course we will. What do you think I'm doing here? Well, apart from saving my own life by proxy, I guess."

Past Him hesitates, his spooning halfway to his mouth. "You're... really me then?"

"Yup."

"Then-"

"Shut up and eat, okay? We'll talk once you've had some sleep."

Past Him is too worn out to put up much of a fight, which is just fine with him. There's time now, to put things off until tomorrow. There's time a-plenty for them, for now.

* * *

In the morning Danny wakes to the patter of a light rain against the tent, and Past Him is gone.

"...Idiot."

He floats out of his sleeping bag and gets dressed, shivering when the cold air nips his chest. On his way out of the tent he grabs a second hoodie with a grumble. It's barely raining, really more of a fine mist if he's gonna be technical, but it's pretty chilly out and Past Him's still weak. If the idiot popped so much as a single stitch wandering around the forest on his own, he's gonna backhand him into next week! He wasn't this dumb when he was fourteen, was he?

...Okay, maybe he was. Still!

He finds Past Him by the nearby stream, sitting cross-legged with his hurt arm resting in his lap, lost in thought. Danny huffs.

"Y'have a nice walk?" He asks, walking up. Past Him comes back to himself with a slow shake of his head, but doesn't reply. With another huff Danny sits next to him, turning his gaze to the stream. The water's so clear he can see the pale river stones at the bottom, and little shadows of fish darting around. It burbles and splashes, louder than the drizzle on the gold and red leaves still clinging to the trees. It's peaceful here. Soothing.

They sit a while.

"How you doing?" He asks eventually.

"...'M'cold."

"That'd be the blood loss, dude." Danny tosses the hoodie at him, earning an indistinct noise of protest. Past Him pulls it on anyway, careful of his arm. When his head pops out he's glaring. The hoodie's a size or two too big for him; he ends up looking like a little kid pouting over not getting any cookies before dinner.

"You're _awfully_ cheery about all this, you know that?"

"Well sure, why not? We've got food, clean water, shelter, we can communicate with the current populace no problem, and I know when our next jumps are gonna be. Oh! And toilet paper. I picked up a bunch of that yesterday and you are _welcome_."

Past Him sneers. "Well _you_ might be satisfied with toilet paper, but I'm not looking forward to having this conversation _again_ in ten years."

Danny laughs. "Wow, thanks! I'm twenty for your information, so it's only gonna be _six_ years until you can make fun of your moping teenage self crying over how hard his life is, _uh boo hoo hoo_."

"I'm _not_ crying-" He stills, the irritation bleeding from him. "...Six years?"

And the snit he'd been working up to vanishes in a puff of morosity. "...Six years," he says again, and rubs his thumb along the bandages on his arm.

Danny gets it. He does. Six years is forever when you're fourteen. Six years is impossible to imagine, even when it's snarking at you and making sure you haven't popped your stitches. Past Him wants so hard to pretend this will all work itself out, that he'll get to go home before this can really get out of hand. It's written on his thin face plain as day. But here's his future self, aged twenty and some change, as harsh a truth as a slap in the face.

Danny _gets_ it. Six years still seems like forever to him now. But at least Danny's already lived the years between fourteen and twenty. He knows that it gets better than it's been for Past Him, that it gets easier. He'll survive, and he'll learn and see more than he ever thought possible, even if he has no control of the whats or whens. He hasn't stopped _wanting_ to go home, and he hasn't stopped trying to get there either. But he understands that rock bottom could be so much worse than this. And if he's turned out okay, then Past Him will too.

He has to. Right?

"Hey."

Past Him says nothing, lost in the middle distance again. Danny rolls his eyes. Forget trauma, this is just _drama_ now. He reaches out and shoves Past Him into the stream. The squawking and yowling that comes after is loud enough to chase a flock of birds out of the treeline, and Danny throws his head back and laughs and laughs.

"What was that for?!" Past Him splutters furiously, hip-deep and soaking wet.

"For brooding!" Danny shouts, flat on his back and kicking his feet.

"For- _what?_ "

Danny drops his legs, swinging himself upright to give Past Him a Very Serious Expression he can only just hang onto. "We future-Dannys have a strict no brooding policy." This is a _staggering lie_. "Breaking this rule will earn you a swift and merciless dunking! If there's no nearby body of water around, we'll settle for a good punch to the nads."

Past Him gapes for several seconds, and then finally- god, was he this slow at fourteen too? He must have been but jeez, this is tragic- he remembers his arm. With a yelp that's half-panic and half-pain he throws his arm over his head, horrified. "My _stitches!_ "

Danny floats to his feet and turns back towards camp, chest aching and mouth sore from grinning. Man, he'd needed a good laugh. "Phase 'em dry! You'll be alright."

Still chuckling, he leaves his past in the water.

* * *

Breakfast is scrambled eggs with bits of ham and bacon. Danny grimaces his way through a cup of instant coffee, the gritty taste waking him up better than the actual caffeine. He leans back in his squat fold-out chair, plastic plate balanced on one knee and plastic cup perched on the other, gives Past Him an appraising glance. He phased himself dry but is still wrapped up in a fleece blanket against the chill, pulled up to his ears. His bandages ought to be changed too, as a precaution.

"So does this time travel garbage get any less random?" Past Him asks.

Danny snorts, setting his empty plate aside. "Pfft, I wish."

"Then how come you're here too?"

"Because this is what happened for me when I was your age, and now it's happening again." He shrugs. "I try not to think about it too hard when this kind of thing happens."

"So, what, I'm destined to time travel for at least six years just to save my own butt?" Past Him stabs at his plate, looking furious. "How's that fair?"

"It isn't destiny, alright? Don't make it sound like we've been prophesied into a magical loop of time hobo bullshit. It's Clockwork, alright? This is all Clockwork's fault."

Past Him doesn't say anything, picking at his eggs. But there's a tension in his shoulders that wasn't there before, even when he'd been racked with pain. Hmm. Danny thinks back again, tries to remember this conversation. It's indistinct now, dreamy shapes instead of true memory. He remembers the meals shared rather than the words that passed between them. Mostly, he remembers being scared and overwhelmed and homesick. Trying to understand what had happened to him and unable to wrap his mind around the possibility of being preordained into having this conversation twice.

Damn.

"Hey."

Past Him eyes him warily, like he's somebody dangerous, somebody to be threatened by. Which, considering things, is a fair assessment. Still, ouch.

"I know this is a lot to take in. It's been- what, four months for you?"

A nod.

"Right, and it's been shit. I remember. And Sam and Tucker, they told you what's gonna happen, but hearing something bad is a whole lot different than seeing it." He gestures at himself, smiling and hoping he looks apologetic. "You don't want to believe, and that's fine. But the fact is, I'm your best case scenario."

"What does that mean?"

"You've seen an alternate Danny or two by now, right?"

Past Him winces. "Just one, in person. The other one was, um. _His_ parents said he was dead."

Yeah, that's more common than he'd like to think about. Comes with the territory though, idiot kid hero trying to save the city one punch at a time. Dannys get hurt or they get dead, or if they're very very _very_ lucky, they get to grow up. "No, no. I mean alternate time-traveling Dannys. Ones like you and me."

He looks at Danny uncertainly. "I… don't think I have?"

"You'd know if you did. They're usually dead."

Ah hell, that was too blunt. Now Past Him looks all panicky again. "I mean- what I mean is, this isn't-" He clears his throat, tries to channel Jazz's Lecture Mode. "Time travel is dangerous. Your arm's proof of that. One slip up in a jump can be fatal. Statistically, it is _way_ more likely that we'll die instead of finding a way to fix this. A foot to the right and instead of a branch in your arm it would've been the whole log through your gut. You've made it this far okay and I've made it farther, but there's six years between us and I can promise you you're going to find some dead Dannys along the way. I'm sorry, but that's facts."

Past Him says nothing for a moment, stirring his eggs again. "...What happened to your face?"

"Huh? Oh." Danny touches his cheek, tracing the edge of a scar even his supernatural healing hasn't touched. "Ended up back in the bad future again, only a few seconds after I'd left. The Observants hit the big reset button while I was there."

"Observants?"

"A bunch of one-eyed time cops who can't grasp the concept of trans-temporal travel to save their skins." He scoffs. "Clockwork works for them."

"Really? He didn't strike me as the kind of guy who, y'know, works well with others."

Danny laughs. "Far as I can tell, you're right on the money. There's definitely some mutual hatred between them, but I couldn't tell you why. It's not often I've run into the Observants, and when I do I have to explain everything all over again and hope they don't try and kill me."

"Why?"

He leans forward to stoke the campfire with a long stick, prodding at the ashy logs until the embers burn brightly again. "Why what?"

Past Him shifts, taking another bite of his eggs. "Lots of whys, I guess. I dunno. Why would they try and kill you? Wouldn't helping us out make their jobs easier? Being, uh, time cops and everything?"

He sighs, leaning back in his chair again. As he answers, he waves and jabs the stick for emphasis. "They put on this big show of passivity- observe, but never to act, kind of their whole thing really- but they're just as trigger happy as any ghost if you startle them right. And like it or not we startle _everybody_ , because of this." He pats his chest. "No matter what I've told them, they always think I'm trashing their tidy little timelines on purpose. They don't do much about me, obviously- it's kind of in their name- but they're _annoying_. They bristle up and make a big fuss in every timeline I come to as if I'm gonna go out of my way to wreck their tragically linear grasp of past-present-future, but since we've got this-" He pats his chest again, "-they just kind of grumble and posture 'til I leave."

"You…." Past Him frowns, rubs his face, and makes a visible attempt at sorting his thoughts together. This really is a conversation that should wait until the kid's got a full five liters of blood to oxygenate, but Danny knows it won't. Stubbornness is something he's always been guilty of. "They don't know who you are, over and over?"

Danny allows the clumsy question to be left alone, though he dearly wants to poke fun. Blood loss. Trauma. Et cetera. "They don't, that's the thing. They're incredibly limited in their- you know what? Here, we need some visuals, I think."

He floats off his chair to a stretch of dirt closer to Past Him. A soft sweep of power brushes an uneven square clear of leaves and loose stones, and using the stick he'd stoke the fire with Danny draws as he talks.

First, a lone vertical line. "This is one timeline; one whole stupidly long stretch of reality as our little minds understand it from start to finish. Big B and E, Beginning and End, here and here." Two little horizontal ticks to mark each. "And the Observants have existed in one form or another since like, _right_ after the Beginning." He doodles a circle around a dot in a rough doodle of an eye. Dirt's a hard medium, so sue him. "They can see the whole of this timeline laid out like a movie reel. They see everything that will happen, is happening, or has happened within that scope, and they can see when calling in the big guns might be necessary."

"Big guns- meaning Clockwork?" Past Him asks.

"Yeah." He draws another vertical line beside the first. "The thing is- as I'm sure you've figured out by now- is that there is _waaaaaay_ more than just one timeline out there for us to bounce around in. And the Observants from this timeline-" He taps the first line, "-can't even tell this timeline exists at all. If you try telling them Timeline A is different than Timeline B because everybody in the U.S. speaks German or whatever, they'll call you a lunatic." He fills the rest of the open dirt with vertical lines, more for visual effect than is strictly necessary. "Same in Timelines C through Z, onto infinity. You follow?"

"Yeah, I follow. Kind of the only thing that makes sense with all the, um. Places I've been." Past Him rubs his wrist absently, tracing the shallow scars rather than the edge of his bandage.

"...I wasn't a fan of her either," Danny says quietly, and nods at the scars when Past Him looks embarrassed. "At least there was water then. You're gonna _hate_ Duulaman, if you stick around long enough to end up then too."

"Who is-"

"Maybe later," Danny cuts in, making an attempt to smile but feeling it strain across his teeth. Past Him huffs, but at least he isn't twitchy like earlier. Talking all this out is a distraction, if nothing else.

"Okay. So Clockwork works for these Observant guys, right? Having us- me?- getting jerked all over the place is definitely gonna mess up something eventually. Have you tried telling them about how Clockwork's left us out to dry?"

Danny barks laughter, tossing the stick aside. "Are you kidding me? That asshole may as well be my imaginary friend at this point. It doesn't matter what I tell them; they either don't believe me or nothing tangible comes from it. They don't interfere."

"...I see."

"I can't remember, have you tried going to his lair yet?"

"Yeah. Four times, before I gave up and went Earth-side again."

"Ah, okay." Another soft sweep of power brushes away the doodled timelines. He stands, stretching out his back with a groan as something pops. "Yeah, I've tracked his lair down a hundred times if I've done it once. No luck. Mostly I just get lost in the Ghost Zone for a while, until I pop into a time period where someone made a stable portal in Amity Park. Usually it's some variation on Mom and Dad, but there've been a few surprises."

"So he _is_ avoiding me. Us. Whatever." Past Him shuts his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose with his good hand. "This is… way more complicated than I'm prepared to deal with right now."

"That's fair. Here, you're still looking pretty ragged 'round the edges. How about you try and get some more sleep? I promise you won't go anywhere for a while."

He nods. "I… yeah. Sleep- sleep sounds like a good idea."

* * *

It's evening by the time Past Him stirs again, and when he stumbles out of the tent he's a little more put together, a little more coherent. As Danny sets him down by the fire to change his bandages again, he looks around with the first spark of interest he's shown since he showed up. "Where'd you get all this stuff anyway? Did Sam go on another shopping spree?"

"Nah, I don't think Sam's even been born yet. Quit squirming."

"Then quit poking it. What year is it?"

"Mom and Dad just put up the Fenton Works sign on the house."

"So it's only-" He frowns. "Did you get them to buy all this?"

"They're not our parents. Not yet anyway." He tugs on the bandage to make sure the clip isn't loose, then pats Past Him on the knee. "And besides, these are pre-Portal days for them anyway. They'd think I was crazy."

At a loss, Past Him looks out at the campsite again. It's downright spartan, compared to the camping trips Mom and Dad used to take them on. Necessity has made Danny stingy and cautious, used to having nothing but the necessities at the best of times. But for this jump he splurged on lanterns and sleeping bags, a roomy camping tent and pre-cut firewood. Stuff that your normal American family wouldn't think twice on bringing out to the woods, but it's all stuff Danny's gotten used to not having. It is, personally speaking, a shit ton of _stuff_.

"How did you pay for all this?"

"I didn't."

"Then-" His eyes widen, understanding at last. "You _stole_ all this?"

"We gotta survive somehow, y'know?"

"I- well-" He fumbles. "Yeah, I guess. But _stealing?_ "

Danny smiles, not unkindly. "Lemme get dinner started before you get all high and mighty on me, okay?"

Past Him glowers. "I'm not hungry."

"Bullshit, you're not. You're really gonna turn down chicken soup because I stole it? It's like a dollar a can right now anyway, it's peanuts."

"Then you could've _paid_ a dollar for it."

Danny purses his lips, resting his hands on his hips as he levels a distinctly unimpressed glare at Past Him. "Before you look at me like I said I kick puppies for fun- yeah, _that_ look, knock it off- just think about it for a minute. What's the longest you've been anywhere so far?"

He may as well have flipped a switch to make Past Him look so miserable so quickly. "Two weeks."

"Right, and civilization was kaput then anyway, so it wasn't like you could buy a sandwich if you had the money to." He huffs. "I'm not saying it's all post-apocalyptic wastelands from here on out, okay? But the point is, it's really rare for me to be anywhen long enough to land some honestly-made cash to honestly-buy anything. All of this-" He gestures at their little camp site, a circle of garish colors and a smattering of tacky camo, "-is very, very out of the ordinary. I only stole all of this because I knew you'd be showing up too, and I know how long we'll both be here."

Past Him makes a face. What, did he really forget this was a temporary setup? "How long is that?"

"Two months, give a take a day or two for both of us. I've been here three days already, so I've had time to prepare. And yeah, that means I _stole_ a whole bunch of junk I'm not gonna take with me when I leave." He shrugs, dropping his arms. "It sucks, okay? I know it sucks. But it's steal or starve, and frankly dude, I've had my fair share of starving. Haven't you?"

It's a rhetorical question. Past Him looks like a pile of kindling somebody draped a t-shirt and a pair of jeans over. "You did all this… for me?"

"Yup, but don't feel guilty about it. You weren't the one who robbed half the camping section of Wal-Mart, I did. This is all just to help me spin you up." He smiles. "Trust me, I woulda been perfectly happy sleeping in a nice hotel room for two months, but this little fall camping trip is where _I_ learned how to survive, so now it's my turn to repay the favor."

Past Him shuts his eyes, leans back in his chair. The flickering light of the fire spills black shadows in the hollows of his eyes, across the sharp angles of his cheeks and jaw, down the taut lines of his skinny throat. Poor kid. He's had it rough. Danny remembers, with that quiet distance memory gives to all bad things. An echo, absent of pain, softened by time. Long days and longer nights all blurred together, the panic and fear and hunger rubbed away, leaving only the distinct feeling of a loneliness that dogs him still.

Six years really is forever.

"Chicken soup it is," Danny says.

* * *

A week passes quietly. For the most part Danny leaves Past Him be, answering questions when he's asked and providing commentary on little things around the camp without expecting much response. Fire maintenance, trash disposal, washing their clothes in the stream; those kinds of things. He leaves a few hours here and there, to steal more medical supplies and food, and to furtively spy on the house so recently named Fenton Works. Mom and Dad- no, Maddie and Jack, they aren't _his_ parents, they don't even have a son yet anyway- are hard at work fortifying the roof to support what will eventually be the Ops Center. Jazz is too little to be left unsupervised long, so they take turns to play with her and feed her, a gingham blanket and lots of pillows and toys strewn on a safe stretch of rooftop. Mom's- _Maddie's-_ hair is long and curly, and there's no gray touching D- _Jack's-_ temples yet. They're really not much older than he is.

They're happy. He's glad, to see them happy.

A week since Past Him showed up, and he's just about healed up. One of the perks of being a freak; even a branch shunted through his arm really can't slow him down for long. The stitches come out and the heavy bandages are replaced with just two gauze pads, and even that's not all that necessary. The new skin is raw and tender, looks like ground beef instead of scar tissue, but it'll be fine. He'll be just fine.

"You okay?" Past Him asks that night, dinner eaten and plates cleaned. They've been sitting by the fire, bundled up against the autumn wind whipping through the trees. Branches sway and and creak, black outlines against a night sky spilling over with stars. It's a nice night, quiet. Past Him's even been cracking jokes.

"...I gotta show you something," he says, reluctantly. He should have done this days ago. He's put it off long enough.

"Uh-oh. You got all serious. What is it?"

He unzips his hoodie, kneads the hem of his t-shirt in his fingers and swallows. "Something you really won't like."

"You've already been nothing but bad news," Past Him grins. "C'mon, spit it out."

"I wouldn't call this 'bad news,' per se, more of an 'oh my god' kind of news," he replies, and lifts up his shirt.

"Whyyyy are you stripping- oh my god, _what_."

The firelight makes it look worse than it really is. Idiot, he should have thought of that. He should have waited until morning, when the light would be better, when the shadows would be honest. But he might have lost his nerve by then, and he's put it off long enough, he has. This is a cruelty Past Him has to know.

Danny doesn't look down, only watches horror etch hard lines into Past Him's skinny face, at the disgust twisting his mouth, the bulge of his eyes, how he recoils in his chair. He doesn't look down because he doesn't have to. He knows the shape of the hole in his chest like the back of his own hands, has traced its growth a thousand times with careful fingers. He knows the mottled purple bruising, the sloughed flesh that looks more like candle wax than skin, the white expanse of exposed bone, the slippery pink muscles, the glistening edge of subcutaneous fat. The hole in his chest doesn't bleed, but the steady pulse of his beating heart can be touched, if he hooks his finger right.

Past Him's hands have jumped to his own chest, reflexively trying to cover a wound he doesn't have yet.

The fire shifts with a startling loud pop and crackle, sending up a flurry of orange sparks to wink out in the darkness above. The wind sighs, and goosebumps break out across Danny's bare skin. The cold bites at his chest, a bone-deep ache like chewing on ice cubes, and he waits for Past Him to speak.

" _What-_ " He swallows, shakes his head, tries again. "What the _hell?_ "

"The time medallion," Danny replies simply. It's explanation enough, really.

"Howww are you… not dead?" Past Him makes a pained expression, rubbing his chest nervously. " _Are_ you dead? Have you actually been dead this whole time and my ghost sense just didn't work, because-"

"I'm not dead. You'll know when you've found a dead Danny, trust me."

" _Shit_ ," Past Him breathes. "Sam and Tucker told me the medallion was gonna mess with me, but I didn't think- I didn't think it'd be so- so _graphic_."

"It's really not as bad as it looks." He adjusts his grip on his shirt a little, fetching a pocket knife from his hip and flicking it open. The little blade shines blackly, a wavering streak of orange dancing down its edge. "And it doesn't make me as vulnerable as you'd think it would." And he demonstrates this by burying the knife in his chest.

Past Him _shouts_ , jumping to his feet, but Danny's already pulled the knife out. He tosses it underhanded to Past Him, who nearly drops it in surprise. He stares at it, then at Danny. The blade has rusted away to nothing.

"Only Dannys like us can really touch it," he says, tapping his sternum. The tick-tick of his fingernail is loud, like tapping a pencil on a school desk, the kind with a cubby hole for your textbooks. It doesn't echo, but the sound of a cluttered space inside is clear enough.

"...I'm going to throw up."

"It's not _that_ bad." Danny tugs his shirt down, zipping up his hoodie again.

"It's _pretty_ bad, actually!"

"Don't be such a baby. You've got a while before it'll start to show on you." Past Him's face loses its revulsion, gets that miserable dismay he wears whenever Danny talks about the future. "Once the bruising lingers, you're gonna have to get quick with the lies, and creative with how you hide it. Nobody who isn't in the know about what you are or what's happened to you can see it."

"...Who's in the know?" Well, that's begrudging as hell, but at least he's not putting up as much a fuss as Danny had been afraid he would.

Danny closes the distance between them to pat him gently on the shoulder. He smiles, hopes it's a comfort. "People you can trust. Who that ends up being is up to you."

Past Him shakes his head, pulling away. He looks at the knife handle clenched in his fist like it might bite him. "But- but how? You've got a- a- you've got _that!_ " He points unnecessarily. "I think it's bigger than my fist! Does it- god, does it _leak?_ Does it hurt? Like, _all_ the time?"

"Of course it hurts," Danny retorts. "You already know that. It hurts like hell after every jump, and after a while it doesn't _stop_ hurting."

"But you- you never _said_ anything."

Danny shrugs. "What's the point of complaining?"

"What d'you mean, 'what's the point?'" Past Him flails a little, jabbing at his chest with the handle. "That's horrible! That's- how can you _live_ with that?"

Danny huffs again. "Because it's either live with it, or don't live at all."

Past Him stops. Drops his hands to his sides. Looks at Danny like he's seeing him for the first time. And he staggers back, falls into his chair, and crumples up like a paper napkin. Shaky, breathless laughter jangles out of him, the knife handle falling from his limp hand to the dirt with a muted thud.

"I can't do this," he says. "I can't, I can't, I'm in over my head. This is crazy. I can't."

Jesus. He'd forgotten, he'd actually forgotten how much this messed him up the first time around. What can he say? Is there anything? What'd he tell himself the first time?

...Ah, it's been too long. He can't remember.

"You have to," he says quietly. "I'm your best case scenario."

Past Him says nothing, so Danny leaves him by the fire.

* * *

After that, Danny stops hiding his chest. He doesn't turn away when he changes in the tent or when they go down to the stream to bathe, breathless and swearing in the cold. Past Him goes white and quiet every time he sees the wound, and he presses his hand to his own chest when he thinks Danny's not looking. That's fine. He doesn't have to stop being scared of it. He just has to understand what it means.

As the weeks pass Danny finds himself in an almost constant state of déjà vu, opening his mouth to speak only to have dim memories fall from his tongue. He wastes a lot of time blinking and shaking his head, knowing he looks like a strong advocate for helmets in the eyes of his teenage self and not really able to do anything about it. It's not like he isn't aware of how unstable he looks; he remembers this much. He's already _done_ all this. He remembers thinking, with laughable clarity, _Oh good, I go totally banana sandwich because of this_.

He doesn't bother excusing these brief yet annoyingly frequent bouts of confusion. They happen. They keep happening. It's almost convenient, actually, to have half-buried memories on-hand to help with the lessons he's pulling out of his ass. It helps him sound like he knows what he's doing, which is still very, very hilarious.

News flash to Danny Fenton, age twenty and some change: Teaching is a lot harder than it looks. If he ever gets a chance to apologize to Mr. Lancer, _take it_.

Past Him doesn't like hunting. Danny remembers that too, with that weird double-layer to his memory of this jump. Saying something and remembering someone else say it when it really was _him_ saying it after all. He remembers being disgusted before, and horrified, and scared, and _young_.

Him now? He's so frustrated with this idiot kid he could _scream_.

"Do you really want a repeat of Plant Queen Sam's vegetarian nightmare apocalypse?" He asks impatiently, fed up with all the protests he's gotten over this. "You've been here almost a month now, getting three solid meals and all the Zs you could ask for thanks to me, but this _isn't_ a permanent setup. We're both gonna leave, and you need to be able to fend for yourself!"

"I'm just _saying_ ," Past Him says, just as exasperated, "There's got to be a better way than this."

 _This_ is a rabbit caught in a trap and a hunting knife. This is also, apparently, an exercise in futility.

"There _is_ , and I _showed_ you, and you went and had a big hissy fit over how it wasn't 'fair' to the animals!"

"They don't stand a chance that way!" And he grimaces and folds his arms over his chest, haughty and self-conscious and not looking at the shivering rabbit at his feet. "It just- it doesn't feel- it's not _right_."

Danny does a little loop de loop in the air to burn off some tension. It's that or slap some sense his dumb idiot terrible teen self. They're both ghost right now, two black-suited shadows flitting through the forest, checking traps and finally finding something caught, and it is sorely tempting to slap Past Him through a tree or two. He'd survive it just fine, really. "You're thinking about this as murder."

"Yeah, 'cause that's what it _is_."

" _No_ , it's survival. Practical application of your powers in order to sustain your own existence at the cost of an animal's. It's the _food chain_ , dude."

Past Him makes another face. "You sound like one of Jazz's textbooks."

"Because I didn't think you'd kick up such a fuss over this and now I'm jumping through hoops trying to to find a way for this to make sense to you, _you tremendous baby._ "

Past Him throws up his hands. "I don't want to murder a deer with my ghost powers- or a freaking _machete_ , for that matter!"

Danny laughs. "Wow, no. For one, this is a _hunting knife_. Totally different types of knives. Two, who said anything about _deer?_ What are you, greedy? What the hell would we do with a whole deer? I made rabbit traps for a reason."

"You _know_ what I mean."

The rabbit thrashes against the rope around its feet, panting heavily. Danny glares. "Look, it's terrified right now. You'd be doing it a favor and getting a couple meals out of it. Kill the fucking rabbit!"

" _I don't want to!_ "

"You know what? Fine." He phases his hand through the rabbit's chest, a slash of motion too quick for the thing to see. It spasms once more and goes limp. Dead so quick it couldn't have known what was happening. Quicker and more merciful than knives or guns or bows, and bloodless besides, and Past Him is a gutless coward who'd rather starve than kill an animal with his own hands.

"You win," Danny snaps, picking the rabbit up. "Have fun going hungry again."

"Wait, what?"

Danny stalks back toward the campsite, turning human mid-stride. Past Him flits after, nervously, like he's expecting to be punished. Well Danny's not gonna play Disappointed Dad with teenage him. He's too young to be a dad, and too damn peeved besides. "From here on out you don't catch dinner, you don't _eat_ dinner."

"What? Hey, hang on!"

He ignores the whining and protesting all the way back to camp. Past Him doesn't shut up even when he skins and guts the rabbit with practiced hands, though he does hang back and go a little greener than usual. He keeps up the noise as Danny gets the rabbit on a spit and over the fire. He goes on and on, crying about how it's not fair to ask him to kill a defenseless rabbit when they're just a few miles away from Amity Park. As if proximity to easy-access food is something that can be relied on indefinitely, as if that isn't something Past Him is damn well acquainted with already. As if supermarkets and drive-thru fast food have existed since time immemorial and will keep on existing until the sun burns out.

Eventually, disgusted and irritated and fed up and _tired_ , Danny chases Past Him out of earshot with a burning branch in one hand and a ball of ecto-energy in the other to get some peace and quiet.

"I'm trying to teach you a valuable lesson, you ungrateful _ass!_ " He hollers after the disappeared flick of a ghostly tail.

Past Him lasts two days, lurking in the nearby woods. Any time Danny catches him in his peripheral he fires off a few blasts, aiming wide to warn the idiot off. On the third day Past Him drops a dead squirrel on his head, and Danny laughs and waves him down.

"I hate you," Past Him spits.

Danny nods. "Then we're getting somewhere."

* * *

There's just a few days left now.

Danny can't remember who left first, so to be on the safe side he's double- and triple-checking both of their bags. Necessities are priority-packed; medical supplies and emergency rations, spare socks and underwear, knives and iodine pills and parachute cord. All the frivolous trappings he'd splurged on for this jump will be left behind, one more ghost story the humans will tell and retell one another, missing case files that won't ever get solved. He sorts through t-shirts and shoestrings and canteens and tries not to think about the married couple that aren't his parents, only a little older than he is, unaware they'll have a son one day.

Past Him watches him work, floating idly about ten feet off the ground. These two months have been good to him; he's filled out, gotten some color in his face. He could walk down the street and no one would think anything of him, just one more kid killing time after school. He props his chin up with one hand and hums. "Does it get better?"

"Your cooking? Obviously."

" _No_ , I meant _this_." He flaps his other hand vaguely. The two round scars on his forearm stand out like they've been drawn on with marker, but otherwise there's no telling that he'd ever been hurt. "All this stupid time traveling."

Well now. There's a choice to make here if there ever was one.

Brutal honesty, half-truth, outright lying. It's true that it stopped being _hard_ once he got the necessary skills hammered out. It's amazing, really and honestly amazing, what he's seen and what he can still expect to see. It's been incredible and terrible and humbling, to see the many facets of himself, all the hims that could have been and all the hims that never got to be, because they died or were never born, and someone else got to live in his place. Seeing a hundred variations on his friends and family, and a hundred generations of people before and after them too. All the lives lived, all the lives never known.

Yeah, there are many times he could say he's even been happy.

This time, he doesn't need to rely on déjà vu to tell him what to say. He's been expecting this question- _expecting_ , not remembering that it was asked. They're almost out of time. It was bound to come up.

He stops rooting around for his toothbrush, sitting back on his heels to look up at Past Him. "Listen," he says. "This sucks. It really, really sucks, and sometimes I get so homesick I could puke, and I spend so much time scared out of my mind that I'm gonna die in some hole a million years ago and no one I care about will ever know what happened to me. I'm scared I'll say something or do something wrong and mess up a timeline in some huge, awful way. Maybe I already have and I just don't know it yet, because I haven't been back to that timeline. Maybe I'll never get to know how badly I mess stuff up, or how many people I hurt by accident or by choice. Maybe that's a good thing. Or maybe not knowing is worse. I don't know. I just…."

He sighs.

"I don't know," he repeats. "I never imagined I'd grow up to be a time hobo, y'know?"

Past Him smiles down at him, a wry slice of teeth in a sun-browned face. "I don't think anybody ever aspires to be a time hobo."

"Ha, yeah. And I mean- like I've said before, the day-to-day stuff all gets easier. We jump, we acclimate, we get as comfortable as we can until we jump again. Rinse and repeat and hope maybe next time there'll be a ghost portal to go through. We learn how to really roll with all the weird shit that gets thrown at us, and I'm saying ' _we'_ because I met a future time hobo Danny once who had this kind of- I dunno. Stone-cold, grizzled, badass action dad vibe thing going for him. It was very impressive. I was very impressed."

Another smile. "When does that happen?"

"I was seventeen. If you're lucky, you'll see him too."

"How old was- no. You won't tell me, will you?"

"Nope."

Past Him gives an exaggerated sigh, but lets it go.

Danny stands, stretching on tip-toe with his hands over his head to ease the tightness in his spine. One of his knees pops satisfyingly. Geeze. He's only twenty, and he already feels old. "We both get better at this," he says. "And maybe one of us will be lucky enough to find a way to fix this. Maybe I'm not your best case scenario after all, and maybe the future Danny I met wasn't mine."

He almost says what that would mean, for both of them, but the memories of lonely bones and cold metal steal the words from him. "I… ah, hell. It sucks. It really does. Sometimes it gets better, but then it gets worse again, and some stuff there's just no helping. I just had to keep going."

"Like your face?"

"Like my face."

Past Him drops to eye-level, an eyebrow pointedly raised. "And you're still not gonna tell me how exactly you got that? Even though really, I'd think you'd appreciate changing your past so your face doesn't get ripped open."

"It wouldn't be _my_ past if you managed to avoid tall, dark, and homicidal. My past is for keepsies whether I like it or not." It's all tree branch and tributary metaphors for time travel; the past can't be fixed, only altered enough to create a new timeline stemming from the thing you tried to change. The past may as well be set in stone. That's just how it is.

"Yeah, yeah, you've said." Past Him lands, hands in his pockets. "It's still worth trying to change how it goes for me though, isn't it?"

Danny said the same thing, when he was fourteen. "...Good luck."

* * *

 _A/N: The next chapter isn't written (due to the nature of the story I've been writing out of order). I'll be doing Camp NaNo in April to get it and hopefully quite a bit more of my sad time travel ficventure knocked out, so there won't be an update until May. Sorry, and thank you for understanding. I'm still trying to get the hang of this whole longfic business; it's very weird!_

 _Thank you so very much for the reviews! I am just delighted by the theorycrafting you guys are doing. :D As always, if you've got a question please use a PM or hit me up on my tumblr (anthropwashere) instead. I'll answer much faster!_

 _ **MsFrizzle:** 'Langoliered' isn't actually a word, haha. I tend to be pretty casual with my dialogue! But it is a reference to Stephen King's "The Langoliers" which is about monsters that literally eat the past. I didn't go into it because making characters explain real world references always feels a little lame to me, and because it wasn't relevant to the scene. _


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